Rinse and Repeat

by Chameleon2

Reddington, Ressler, Keen and Dembe take off for Mexico for another Blacklist case. While Lizzie and Dembe are taking care of business in Piedras Negras, Reddington and Ressler meet with a contact near Cuatro Ciénegas. However, things rapidly take a turn for the worse when Ressler gets shot, again, and Red has to use of his considerable talents to get the two of them out.

RINSE, REPEAT

Summary: Reddington, Ressler, Keen and Dembe take off for Mexico for another Blacklist case. While Lizzie and Dembe are taking care of business in Piedras Negras, Reddington and Ressler meet with a contact near Cuatro Ciénegas. However, things rapidly take a turn for the worst, and Red has to use of his considerable talents to get the two of them out.

The Blacklist and its characters are not mine, just taken, abused and returned. This fic will be somewhat lacking in Lizzie, simply because I think that of all characters, she's the least interesting. Funny thing is, that I thought this about Ressler as well. And then he got shot in Episode 9, and suffered so beautifully, and had such GREAT moments with Red that I re-watched that episode twice in a row. I may have some issues when it comes to shot, bleeding and helpless yet valiant male characters.

1.

"I wouldn't have thought you'd be eager to repeat this situation so soon," Reddington said with that maddening cheerfulness Ressler was more and more coming to utterly hate. "Put pressure on this. No, harder, you're bleeding quite badly and we don't want to leave a trail. That collapse will slow them down, but not for long. Are you going to throw up? I'm rather fond of these shoes, and if you could possibly direct any involuntary regurgigatory responses to the side I'd be very much obliged."

Ressler said nothing, and swallowed both the bile and the groans rising in his throat while he pushed one hand hard against the side of his belly and twisted the other one in Reddington's silk and cotton blend shirt. The man's right arm was hard around his back, Reddington's hand pressed over Ressler's on the shot wound just left above his hip. His left hand grasped Ressler's left wrist, pulling him along and propping him up on Red's shoulder. Ressler, half a head taller, was draped over the older man as if coming back drunk from a night out binging. He wished to god he'd wake up in a few hours, with nothing but a hangover as a reminder.

An involuntary sound of pain escaped him, and once he'd made that one sound, it became almost impossible to keep silent.

God, it hurt. He was amazed by how badly it hurt. After his leg, after surviving that, he'd thought any other pain would be irrelevant, just a pale echo of that overwhelming, all-invading agony—but no. The memory of his leg did nothing to cull the tearing pain of his belly, and having to walk with a bullet in the gut did not improve matters. At least when he'd been bleeding out in the box, he'd been able to lie down still. Now…

"Come on, Donald," Reddington chided, tightening his grip on his hand and jolting him back to full consciousness with the resulting spike of agony, "stay with me, now. Trust me, you don't want to rest yet, not with Jorge on our tail."

I wasn't resting, Ressler thought mutinously. As a matter of fact, they were moving quite fast, with Reddington dragging him along and he himself trying to keep the pace as best as he could. But even as he thought so, Reddington picked up speed, and every protest he might consider voicing was drowned out in another wave of pain. It rushed through his belly and lower body, then flooded out, leaving his skin prickling and wet. He was sweating so much Reddington's expensive shirt was soaked through where he was in contact with Ressler—somehow, that made him feel just a tiny tiny bit better.

Hell no, it didn't.

He swallowed, licked the salt from his lips.

"I must compliment you on your deodorant," Reddington said, and to his immense satisfaction Ressler noticed a slight unevenness of breath. Spry as the older man was, it was a relief to know that hauling a fully grown and mostly limp man along tired even him out.

"Yeah?" he gasped, more to show he was still capable of speech than because he was interested in conversation.

"Oh, definitely. I was in a similar situation a couple of years ago. An associate of mine got shot by…well, another associate, who'd decided our partnership was a hollow lie and resented that realization." The tunnel they were walking through opened up into several passageways. Ressler expected Reddington to steer them into the first possible option, but to his surprise they passed three sideways before they took a left turn. "Poor Maxwell was a good deal smaller than you," Reddington went on as he tightened his grip on Ressler's left wrist, positioning his shoulder more securely in the agent's armpit, "but his personal hygiene left something to be desired, which, in the end, was a much heavier burden to me."

"Glad to be…of service."

Reddington uttered a somewhat breathless chuckle. "Why, you do have a sense of humour. I never expected. Perhaps, when this is all over, we should share a bottle of Domaine Serene Pinot Noir on a little terrace in the French Quarter, have a bit of a friendly chat."

"Can't wait," was what Ressler intended to say, but what came out was something in between a moan and a whimper, and thankfully Red kept quiet then, concentrating on propelling them forward.

Ressler had no clue how long they moved through the maze of tunnels, but at one point they halted, and he gratefully sank against a jutting piece of rock as Red eased away from him. The mine's lights danced in front of his eyes, almost blinding him despite their dimness. He remembered seeing everything in stark colours, when he'd been shot before; now it was as if all he could see was grey tones.

"How are your extremities?"

Oh strange echo. He opened eyes he hadn't been aware closing, surprised not to find himself in a glass cell. "Cold, but still functional."

"Good. Your life depends on your ability to walk." He reached over and started unbuttoning Ressler's shirt. "It is my solemn intention to get the both of us out of this mess, especially after what you did for me, but I can't carry you, and I can't let you fall into their hands alive."

The words should have chilled Ressler, but as he found himself agreeing, he didn't bother trying to act scandalized. "They're not interested in me," he returned, and shivered as Red carefully peeled off his shirt from his shoulders and the cool air hit his damp skin.

"Perhaps not," Red said, "but they are interested in me, and if they find out you're FBI, they'll torture you so cruelly you'd give them Director Cooper's mother's cat's date of birth if they were to ask you for it." He smiled brightly, as if this was a worthy achievement. "I only have the one gun, and I'm sorry, but I'm not going to leave it with you and continue my way unarmed. I need you to let go for a second so I can get this sleeve off of you…good." He shook out the garment, critically assessing the patches of blood and sweat, then clicked his tongue and quickly rolled up the body of it until it formed a flat sausage suspended by the two long sleeves. "Move your hand."

Ressler released the hand he'd held clamped tightly against his abdomen, grunted, pushed it back hard, then made himself relax so Red could tie the shirt around the wound as a make-shift bandage. The sleeveless undershirt he was wearing was red from hem to chest, and right before Reddington covered up the hole he could see him push something that was bulging out back inside, which resultedinanother thin stream of blood, widening the stain on his pants and making it creep down to his knee.

"How bad…how bad is it?" He couldn't help sounding about six years old.

"That entirely depends on what got hit and how quickly we can get you onto the operating table," Reddington said with that same, matter-of-fact optimism he remembered from the glass box. He didn't seem overly concerned by the bulging thing. He tightly wound the sleeves of the shirt around the agent's waist, knotting them on top of the wound for extra pressure, then took Ressler's hand and placed it back on top of the knot. When he looked up, his face was mild, but his eyes were quite serious. "The bullet's still inside of you. No exit wound. You can still walk, and that's good, but you've lost a considerable amount of blood, and that's bad. I'm not sure how badly your intestines are torn, or what other organs were damaged." He placed his bloody fingers against the vein in Ressler's neck, squinting at his watch as he took his pulse. Pursed his lips. "All considering, you're not doing too badly, but we still have a long way to go. It will not be pleasant. Are you still carrying those painkillers of yours with you? If so, now would be the time to take a pill."

How do you know? Ressler thought. It was four months after he'd been shot in the leg, and he had no real reason to have any painkillers on him anymore. Apart from that one instance, two and a half months ago, when he'd ended up driving all the way back from Johnstown and found out he'd run out of Lorcet. The following hours of throbbing, sweat-inducing pain not at all driven back by the over-the-counter painkillers he'd bought instead had made him cautious, and he had made sure to carry at least two or three of the pills in his wallet ever since, even if he never needed them again. In time he'd even forgotten he had them, noticing them only when he put small change into his coin pocket. But how could Reddington know that? He controlled his impulse to ask, though, and merely said, "Wallet. Back pocket."

Red reached behind him, into his pants, and fished out the wallet. Their tinfoil cover was slightly rumpled in places, but the two pills were still whole. "Here you go," Reddington said, dropping one of them in Ressler's palm before folding the wallet closed and replacing it in the agent's pocket. "Who knew what providence it was to get shot and receiving the required medication in advance, huh?" He checked his watch again, fiddling with the buttons on the side of it. "We need to go. Are you ready?"

Ressler nodded. The pill stuck, bitter, to his palate, dissolving slowly with every lick of his dry tongue. He'd tried to swallow it dry, but it made him gag helplessly. Reddington pulled him to his feet. "Lean on me. Let me know if you start to lose feeling in your hands and feet—although I think you'll be ok for some time yet."

Ressler nodded again, closing his eyes against the sweat that the agony of standing up had flushed out of his skin. One foot in front of the other, left right, left right. The Lorcet would kick in quickly—at least he hoped so. He let Reddington lead the way.

The irony, Reddington considered with some cynical appreciation, was that this was not even a Blacklist case. He truly had not expected to run into any kind of trouble on this trip—and that showed that even he still had things to learn in this world.

The man he and Ressler had come to see while Lizzie and Dembe played their part in Piedras Negras, was supposed to have been trustworthy. Or at least not homicidal. Perhaps it had been their contact, Luis Monta, now deceased, who'd fucked up. Perhaps Jorge Flores Diaz had found out Ressler wasn't who he claimed to be, or perhaps, god forbid, Red himself had simply mistaken the nature of their alliance. Perhaps Jorge was smarter than Reddington had calculated him to be, or maybe he was significantly less intelligent. Even as he was dragging the stumbling, increasingly heavier FBI agent towards the north-west exit of the mine, his mind was racing to try and find out what exactly had gone wrong, and why.

Especially the 'why' was bugging him. Jorge was nothing more than a messenger, a pawn to lure a bishop to the wrong square in order to make a queen choose the wrong path. Jorge was basically insignificant, just a useful merc to know when he was in Mexico, nothing more. Reddington had about a hundred of these pawns scattered all over the world, and the only times they'd ever caused him trouble was when they grew too influential, wanted more power. Jorge Flores Diaz had all the power he could possibly get in this armpit of the world, and he'd never shown any inclination of wanting to broaden his horizons. So why had he betrayed the man he had, so far, shown so much gratitude for enabling him to get to this position?

A better offer? Possible, but not likely. Who'd take the trouble coming all the way out here to seduce a man like Jorge?

He checked his watch. They were still moving westwards. Good. He halted his step for a moment, Ssh!-ing Ressler as the man groaned out a question. No sound of footsteps, no sound at all apart from the younger man's gasping breath and his own, calmer, respiration.

"They haven't found us yet," he concluded, satisfied, then started as the younger man's weight seemed to intensify all of a sudden. "No, no, no, Donald, now is not the time. Come on, stay with me. One step in front of the other. That's it. Keep moving. It shouldn't take much longer."

"Longer before what?" Ressler mumbled. He sounded groggy, and his face shone an unhealthy pale in the spare light, but at least he was carrying most of his own weight again.

"Before we get to the exit of the mine."

"Yeah? You know…you know this place?"

"Well, know, know…" Red managed a half-shrug beneath the younger man's shoulder. "I didn't manage to memorize the place, if that's what you're implying. But I do know this mine has several exits, the least likely being the one we're heading for."

"Least…likely?"

"Least likely to choose to use, from our point of view," he clarified. He changed his grip on the other man's waist, used his other hand to reposition the gun he'd snatched from Luis Monta's limp fingers in the waistband of his pants. For once he was happy not to be wearing slacks; the belt on his chinos kept the gun from sliding down his back.

"Huh. And what…are you planning to do…once we reach that…that unlikely exit?"

"Trick them, of course," said Reddington with a smirk.

Either the Lorcet had kicked in, or else his body had gotten used to the pain in his gut, because even though his steps still faltered and he needed Reddington's support, Ressler found it a little easier to move. The pain had eased so that it no longer took up his whole world—only about, say, 90%. He no longer had to repeat right, left, right, left to himself; his legs moved on their own accord. The remaining 10% had become aware of the itch of sweat on his face and the chill of the air on his slick bare arms, and of the discomfort of his parched throat.

Sometimes, Reddington spoke. Occasionally, Ressler understood what he was saying and tried to respond in an intelligent fashion; sometimes he only became aware the other man had been speaking when the last echoes of his voice reached his ears before the silence returned. One in a while a shiver started at the base of his spine, and if that happened he grit his teeth and tried not to cry out at the waves of pain that brought about.

Probably shock, he thought, as he looked down his own blood-stained lower body and watched his feet go forward, forward, forward. It was 98 degrees in the sun—that thermometer on the wall of that candy shop—must be close to 92 in here. Shouldn't be cold, so it's shock. That's ok, he said I was doing fine, considering. Last time anyone put their hand on my neck like that, it was Mom, and I was eight. He huffed out a laugh, biting his lip the moment it was out. Laughing hurt. Reddington turned his face towards him, but he shook his head. Nothing he cared to share with that maniac, thanks.

And to think that Keen saw him as an ally. Oh, she said that she didn't trust him, that she hated him, and he was convinced that some part of her resented Reddington for manipulating her, but in the end she'd put aside her distrust and take his word for gospel. Saw him as a daddy-figure, no doubt. He wondered if she'd already asked him if he were her biological father—wondered if she'd had taken a blood sample, like he, Ressler, had done, and had run a DNA test, like he had done as well. No match. No relative. So what was she to him, then? Sometimes he thought Keen was yet another trap, a…a kind of anti-mole, if that made sense. After all, who was she? Smart and pretty, yes, and quite sweet, really, but horribly naïve—whoever applied for adoption working at the fucking post office? Hadn't she noticed that a normal family life was the last thing one could hope for?

Reddington was talking again. He only caught the last part of the sentence: "…close to the exit, now. How are you holding up?"

"'ll Manage," he croaked, annoyed at the distraction. He could, as long as he didn't think about his innards bulging out of his body. Left, right. Left, right. He thought about Audrey. She'd become a distraction as well, in the end. Wasn't that a terrible thing? She was the best thing that had ever happened to him, and he'd…it wasn't as if he hadn't known that, but it just hadn't been as important as catching Reddington. And now she was back, and they were carefully seeing each other again, which was good, it was so good to be with her—but all this time he kept seeing the question in her eyes. 'Am I more important now? More important than him?' and whenever he noticed that question, he had to look away, because no, she wasn't, even though Reddington was RIGHT HERE, he was using the man as a fucking CRUTCH, he still hadn't been caught, and Ressler still wanted to be the one to bring him down.

"Guess I'm a little obsessive, that way," he rasped aloud, and cried out as Reddington tightened his grip on his side again, shocking him awake like the most painful alarm in the world.

"Stay with me, Donald. Not far now, and I need you conscious and alert."

"I'm awake, God, please, I'm awake!"

They walked on, and he desperately tried to focus on something besides the pain—hate, perhaps? but the halting cadence of their stumbling steps reminded him of the sound of combat boots running through hallways, and that made him think of Audrey's heels on the floor of their favourite restaurant…

Focus. Focus, damn it!

"I'm sorry."

It took a few seconds before he realized Reddington had just apologized. "What?"

"I'm sorry I hurt you, just now. I'm afraid I'll have to do it several times more, today, if we both want to survive, but nevertheless, I take no pleasure in it, and I am sorry."

Ressler focused wide eyes on what he could see of Reddington's face, which happened to be his right ear. Oh God, he's going to do something else excruciatingly painful to save my life. Humans were not able to remember pain, he knew, but he did recall the unbelievable agony of the man cutting into his mangled leg to reach the damaged artery, and despite himself he leaned away a little. No! And that hurt so much he doubled up and listed, and would have fallen if Reddington hadn't hauled him closer and shoved his hip against Ressler's to prop him up.

"Easy, Agent Ressler," he said softly, and soothingly kneaded the young man's wrist between his fingers. "With a bit of luck, all will turn out well." This time he used his forearm rather than his hand to urge Ressler forwards. "We're almost at the exit."

"So you…keep saying."

"But this time I mean it. Look there." He gestured with his chin, and indeed, only a few yards ahead the tunnel was getting lighter. A few steps more and the leds on the ceiling stopped. Not much further on, Red detected an empty box, apparently used as an improvised seat one day, judging by the cigarette butts scattered around its base. He helped Ressler sit down on top of it and took another moment to check the bandage—stained, but not yet soaked through—and pull it a little tighter before pressing the back of his hand against Ressler's cheek. It was an oddly affectionate gesture, even if the man was probably just checking his temperature, and for some reason it brought tears to his eyes. The next moment, though, the warmth left his face, and when he opened his eyes, he was relieved to find them no longer brimming.

Red regarded him stoically for a few seconds, I probably look about as terrible as I'm feeling, then nodded to himself and squatted down in front of him, so Ressler could look him in the face without having to lift his head.

"Listen to me. The reason I took us to this tunnel is that it opens up to the quarry, and Jorge would never expect us to try and escape this way because there's nowhere to go from there. He'll focus on combing through the tunnels and position his men at the other entrances. However, he'll definitely have all exits covered, so I'm convinced he'll have someone guarding this one, too. Now, I am going to find out exactly how bad the situation is, and I may need you to join me in some hurry. Are you up to that?"

I don't know. Am I? His immediate answer to that question was 'hell, no.', but at the same time, he knew that wasn't an option. Come what may come, he would do what he had to do, or…well, collapse and then die by Reddington.

"Yes."

Again that blank stare. Then Red's mouth widened in a small but genuine smile. "Good man. Wait for my signal." And he disappeared into the lightening hallway.

Ressler sat on the box, both arms would tightly around his abdomen, and tried both to stay conscious and to figure out what on earth had possessed him to jump in front of Reddington and take that bullet instead of him.

2.

When he and Roger Witthers had been working on a case, seven years ago, only a few months after his transfer from Special Ops and when he'd still thought the only worthy uniform was camo and suits were for people over forty, Ressler had watched an unsub shoot his partner in the gut. Roger had shaken it off, pursued the suspect on foot, made the arrest and only realized he'd taken a bullet when Ressler told him everything would be ok: the ambulance would be here in a moment.

He hadn't even noticed he'd been shot.

Although he hadn't minded working with him, Ressler had always considered Roger to be a bit of a wuss. The kind of guy who complained about bruises and limped because of a scuffed knee.

Then how was it fucking possible that man, who'd needed band-aids for paper cuts, had chased down a man with a bullet in his stomach, not even aware he'd been wounded, while Ressler was almost completely crippled by a similar injury?

Adrenaline? It had definitely started pumping, the moment he realized that this was a setup and the glint on the rock in the distance was a fire arm. Never made him not feel every second of being shot. He'd seen the gun cock, and he'd known it was going to be fired, and that it would aim at Reddington…and then what? In retrospect, everything seemed a blur: his own shout, "Gun!", and his lunge to cover Reddington and push him out the bullet's trajectory. Then an invisible horse magically appearing from heaven and dropkicking him in the gut with flaming hooves, their contact dropping and Reddington diving for something the man was holding in his hand. He'd grabbed Ressler by the scruff of the neck (it was getting a habit, really) and pushed him towards the mouth of the mine. He vaguely recalled falling debris and crashing wood, but by then, he'd been so totally flummoxed by the debilitating pain in his abdomen he hadn't been able to pay much attention to anything but staying on his feet and praying his guts wouldn't spill out.

He groaned, secure in his moment of privacy, and wiped his forehead before checking his watch. Eleven twenty-four. He blinked, looked again. Eleven twenty-four, am. The rendezvous at the mine had been scheduled to take place at ten thirty. No more than two hours ago, he'd been having breakfast with Keen in the crummy little café opposite the candy store. He'd only been shot little more than half an hour ago.

God, it felt like days.

At least his pill had kicked in by now; the pain seemed more distant, at least so long as he didn't move. And his face no longer felt numb. So maybe this time the earlier symptoms of shock had not been caused by blood loss, but by simple trauma.

We'll be alright. I will be fine. It may look bad, but it's no big deal. We'll find a phone, call in to the post office and arrange extraction, I'll spend another couple of days in the hospital and then I'll take a few days off and spend some time with Audrey.

Of course, if that bastard Jorge hadn't taken his gun and both his and Reddington's phone, they wouldn't have been in this predicament at all; they'd just call Dembe and Keen, hide out somewhere until they could pick them up and hightail it out of there. Well, if Reddington was right and Jorge had men posted outside, chances were they had a cell. Who went without one, these days?

"Agent Ressler."

He looked up and slid from the box. The movement made him blanch, but his knees didn't buckle and he was able to walk towards Reddington's voice on his own. "I'm here."

Reddington met him a few meters away from the glaring opening, keeping to the shadows and gesturing him to do the same. Ressler slumped against the wall, shivering at its cool grittiness against his shoulder. "What'd you find out?"

"There is at least one man out there; you can see his car, further down the quarry, but I haven't detected him yet." He regarded Ressler with hooded eyes. "What do you say, Donald? Do you have it in you to play the hero once again?"

Ressler wished the man would, for once in his life, come to the point straightaway. "What do you need me to do?"

Red nodded towards the exit. "Walk out there and draw his—or their, there's probably two of them—attention, collapse and make them come over so I can shoot them down."

Ressler huffed out another laugh before he could stop himself. "Just like that, huh?"

"Just like that," Reddington confirmed. "Look, I can understand you're not a big fan of this plan, but it's the only way we're going to draw them out of hiding. You, they don't necessarily care about…

"…which greatly enhances the risk of them just gunning me down like a dog."

"…but they'll want to interrogate you to find out where I am," the other man continued. "They know you're wounded—it's hard to miss, the way you look." His eyes strayed to the top of Ressler's head, and in a flash of absurd self-consciousness he rubbed his fingers through his hair, combing it back. It was damp with sweat and sticky-stiff with gel—and now undoubtedly smeared with blood as well.

The tiniest of smirks touched Reddington's mouth. "You look just lovely, Donald." He grew serious again. "I wouldn't ask you to do this if I saw another way out. You prevented Jorge's man murdering me, so they want me dead. If they see me, they'll shoot to kill. You, however…You, they'll want to talk to."

Talk to…torture, hideously mutilate, that kind of thing. Ressler scowled. "You could give me the gun."

"Yes, I could, and then they would shoot you down and I would be unarmed." The exaggerated patience in his voice made Ressler twitch. "Additionally, they would know exactly where I was, as they saw me pick up Luis' gun; they'd know I'd given it to you. Besides, are you able to place a good shot in your current condition?"

"Yes, I would," Ressler said, but it was but a feeble protest. The criminal was right again. Apart from staying here and waiting for Jorge to find them, the only option was to leave the mine, eliminate the man or men guarding it, steal the car Reddington had mentioned and make sure my guts stay on the inside. He wasn't convinced Reddington was the better shot of the two of them, but he did have a point about shooting down an unarmed man. He might stand a better chance without the weapon.

"Fine." He took a deep breath and immediately regretted it. Pretending to be hurt wouldn't challenge his acting skills at all. "I'll go."

Reddington nodded, as if he'd been expecting nothing else from him. "Make sure you take a relatively straight path. Walk away no further than about a hundred feet distance from the mouth of the mine, but stay no closer than seventy. I still need to have a clear shot. And when you fall, try to cushion the fall with your knees; we wouldn't want you to pass out for real."

"Should I press my hand against my forehead and wave in the air before I faint?" Ressler asked acidly, and was rewarded with a short bark of honest laughter from Red.

"No, that won't be necessary. Just do what comes naturally. And remember: I'm right behind you, keeping an eye on you."

"Yeah," Ressler muttered. "I'll be perfectly safe." He pushed away from the wall, took another few deep and careful breaths and stepped into the light.

Immediately, he was completely blinded. The sun beat down on him as if it were only a yard away, burning his skin and making his blood throb in his wound, his temples and the tips of his fingers. He was suddenly terrified and stumbled, feeling terribly naked and helpless in this empty white hell. The perfect practice target.

Walk.

He couldn't. His heart thumped in his throat and hammered in his chest. He brought his hand up, palm first, to block out the sun and shield his face, just as an unsuspecting man would do. His other arm clutched his stomach, until he remembered he should show how badly he was injured.

Walk. Become a walking duck at least.

Those first few steps further into the quarry were the most difficult he'd ever taken, and that included the first time he was allowed out of bed after the last time he'd been shot.

I'm going to be shot. They'll shoot me. Is that the click of the safety coming off?

He kept walking, counting his steps, or trying to count while his skin pulled and crawled in expectation of a bullet.

Six, seven steps, eight. Nine. Ten. He swayed on his feet and halted again, hunching over his aching abdomen and desperately trying to stop hyperventilating. His breath was whooshing through his throat, but he couldn't get enough air.

Move! He screamed at himself. Move, you fucking idiot! They haven't shot you yet and you've been out here in plain sight for half a minute already, so they won't shoot you now. Move! Think of how you're presenting yourself to Reddington, with your ass jutting out like a dart board. Imagine the view you'll offer him when you piss your pants in fear, you fucking pussy coward. MOVE IT!

So he started walking again. He tottered a perfect hundred feet into the quarry, noticing movement from the corner of his eye at one moment, and he took that as a cue to sink to his knees and hit the ground. The impact jarred him badly, more so than he'd expected, and he spent several seconds fighting not to make a sound or writhe in the dust. For a very long moment, nothing happened, and he thought, They're not buying it. They know it's a trap. They can tell I'm not really unconscious—I've always been so lousy at make-belief. No wonder the teachers made me play a tree at the school play; even at six I lacked any talent for acting … And all the while, he expected to feel pieces of steel rending open his body…but all was silent. Then, he heard the clatter of rocks and the crunch of hesitant footsteps. Some part of him could feel the gun barrel trained on his head, and he grit his teeth to keep motionless. From the right, more footsteps. A shadow blocked out the sun.

Come on, Reddington. Make true on your w—

A shot cracked through the air and he cringed, but it was not him the bullet hit. The man closest to him screamed and fell to the ground, kept on screaming. Another shot sounded, then another. He heard running, then another shot and the sound of a body falling. He looked up, blinked dust from his eyes. No movement ahead or on either side of him, apart from the flailing Mexican ten foot away from him.

Who has a gun. And was reaching for it with clawing hands, eyes bulging.

Ressler scrambled to his feet, lurched, fell down again, cursing. Then Reddington's voice: "Stop him!", and he grabbed the nearest object he could find underhand—a stone the size of his fist—and pitched it straight into the man's head. The screaming abruptly stopped. Twelve years of football practice, asshole.

"Bravo," came Reddington's deadpan voice from right behind him, and he had turned before his torn belly could warn him that was a bad idea. "Nice throw. Baseball?"

"Football."

"Let me guess: you were about to go professional, but got some sort of injury to your hamstring and decided to pursue another career." He moved past Ressler to look down on the man's body, nudging the pistol away from where it had fallen, still clutched in the man's hand. One flick of his foot and the gun ended up next to Ressler. "Take it. He's dead, by the way. So's the other one. I don't think there's a third."

Ressler picked up the heavy pistol, identified it as a Heckler & Koch, frowned at it, then and shoved it into his pocket. There'd be time to think about the significance of this kind of weapon later. Reddington extended his left hand to help him up and Ressler took it, only noticing the blood when his grip slipped on the man's wrist. He hesitated.

"You're hit." Reddington's sleeve was wet from the bicep down.

"No need to rub it in," Red said flippantly. "It's just a scratch, don't worry about it." He winced as he pulled the younger man up, but his scanning gaze around the quarry never wavered and the half-cocked gun in his right hand remained at the same level. "How are you? We'll need to climb up a bit to reach that car." He jerked his head at the old jeep parked on the slope leading down into the quarry, a good 100 yards away.

Ressler wrapped both arms around his stomach. "I don't have much of a choice, do I?"

"No," said Reddington. "You don't. Keep an eye on things while I pat down this unfortunate soul and pilfer all of his valuables."

As fate would have it, all the man Ressler had killed had on him was his wallet and a spare clip for his pistol. Reddington took the money from the wallet and tucked it back into the dead man's pocket. He could feel Ressler's stare boring into the back of his head.

"We might need to bribe someone, and all I'm carrying is dollars. Besides," he added, somewhat annoyed at himself for offering an explanation, "this will pay for the dry cleaning."

"Really," was all Ressler said. He really had a singularly flat and boring voice.

Red ignored him, got to his feet and made for the other man, who was lying with his head down a couple of meters away. He was satisfied to discover that he'd killed him with a clean head shot, then saddened to see he could be no older than twenty, maybe twenty-two. No matter that this kid had clipped him, he always hated to see a young life wasted like this. In his pockets, Red found a set of car keys, a pack of cigarettes, a lighter and a MacDonald's voucher. He took the keys, lighter and cigarettes and almost tenderly replaced the voucher. A few yards away, he found what he'd expected to find: a walkie talkie. Unfortunately, it only had one channel and could not reach the mobile network.

Well. Isn't that just great? Really, Jorge, I set you up better than this. Why didn't you get them all iPhones? He was about to toss the radio away, then thought better of it and stuffed it into his back pocket. Perhaps they would find a cell in the car.

Taking out his pistol again, he began to walk towards the jeep, checking his arm as he moved. Little more than a graze, really, but it still stung unpleasantly and had bled rather badly. Now, his shirt was sticking to the wound, forming a crude bandage. Later, he would take the time to dress it properly; for now, this would have to do.

He was almost a third of the way up to the jeep when the sound of shifting pebbles made him look back, and he almost clucked at the sight. Ressler was following him like a wounded pet, progressing with truly heartbreaking stubbornness…but slow. Really, he didn't know whether to congratulate the man on his perseverance or tell him to take a break, for god's sake.

He will only slow you down. You are aware of this, aren't you? Red sighed. He could just leave Ressler behind. What were the chances of the agent surviving whatever it was they had to do to return to Piedras Negras anyway?

Then again, he was alive still, wasn't he? Ressler was like a blonde cockroach, not indestructible but terribly tough to kill.

He watched him struggle up the steep slope for a few seconds: the bent head, the determined, faltering steps, the tightly-pressed lips.

Oh come on, it would be like abandoning a lost kitten! And do you think Cooper will still have anything to do with you when you 'accidentally lose' his golden boy after a shootout that wasn't even supposed to happen? For all his dour nature, Donald still makes a good agent—and Cooper wants to know just as much as I do what his agenda is.

At the moment, Donald Ressler's agenda pretty much held one topic: reaching the car or die trying. Of course, if he didn't try, he'd die anyway; Ressler had no illusions Red was going to hold his hand. The poor boy was terribly suspicious of him.

But Lizzie likes him. More importantly, Audrey does, enough to leave him in the first place, and enough to come back to him now. That must say something. Audrey's a remarkable woman.

But more than that, Red found himself to be curious as well. Because, well…no one was that perplexingly dull, was one? Ressler was so boring, so by the book, so inconspicuously perfect, he had to have some kind of secret. Chasing after Raymond Reddington for five years was fine, but unless Reddington had done something that had hit Ressler personally, he didn't have a reason to be that obsessive. The thing was, so far, Red hadn't been able to find all that much on the younger man. His name showed up only sporadically, even in files Raymond knew he should be included in, and for someone hounding Reddington, that was odd.

Ah crap, admit it. You like him! He's so delightfully uncomplicated. And really, you saved his life once. You can hardly leave him behind now, can you?

Sliding down a couple of yards, he caught up with Ressler and shoved his shoulder under his arm. Ressler gasped with relief, and Red grunted as most of the man's weight suddenly pressed down on him.

"Take it easy, Donald. You're really too big for me to carry."

"Sorry…"

Really, the man was unbelievable. There hardly was a rim of iris visible beneath the sandy lashes, he was barely conscious, and he still offered apologies. Red laughed. "You may not be as dull as I originally thought. That's a compliment, by the way."

Ressler didn't react, either because the words didn't register in his pain-muddled mind, or because he didn't deign them worthy of a reply.

It took them longer to reach the car than Red was comfortable with, but he still took a moment to install Ressler in the front seat and grab the backpack lying on the backseat before taking place behind the wheel. He was also happy to detect two 1 litre and several 500 ml bottles of water on the floor, and picked up one of the smaller bottles.

"When you're caught your breath, see what's inside of that," he told Ressler. For now, all the man was capable of was lying in a half-faint in his seat. Red started the ignition, grimaced at the coughing sound it produced, and carefully drove up the slope out of the quarry.

"Is it broken?" The hoarse voice lacked all inflection yet managed to sound obtrusive nevertheless.

"Ah, it is alive! How are you feeling?"

"Somewhat worried that we're not driving any faster."

Red shrugged. "Will you look at that! Is that a falcon? I think it is. I know you prefer eagles, but I've always had a weakness for the elegant falcon." He could feel Ressler's scowl even with his eyes on the road, and smirked. "If I were to put my foot down on the gass, I'd kick up a hell of a lot of dust. With Jorge on the lookout, I think it might serve to be as inconspicuous as possible."

Ressler said nothing, which Red decided was because he couldn't protest what was the obvious truth. He wondered what went on in that head of his. Were his thoughts as straight and ordered as his hair? Was he like a machine, responding to a correct data feed only? Nevermind his thoughts, his body recovered quickly; he was already unzipping the backpack and taking out what was inside and lining it up on the dashboard.

"Did you find a phone?"

"Not yet. I did find a package of butterfly fridge magnets, though."

"What?" Red stared, perplexed, at the cellophane bag with brightly-coloured paper butterflies.

"And a cell phone!" Ressler fiddled with it for a few seconds. "And it's dead."

"Give it to me."

"I know how to handle a phone, Reddington. It's empty."

Red held out his hand. "I'm driving with my wounded arm, Donald. Give me the phone or risk crashing against that rock over there; I'm extremely dextrous."

The phone slapped into his hand. Unfortunately, the phone was indeed empty and did not respond to swiping, pressing or fondling. He returned it with a frown.

"There's a charger as well." Dear Donald almost seemed to sound a little smug. "How is it possible this guy forgot to charge his phone but did take the time to buy fridge magnets?"

"How do you know he bought them today?"

"The receipt."

"What else is inside?"

"Nothing much. A bottle of water. A sandwich. A pack of cards. A Ludlum."

"A Ludlum you say. Which one?"

Silence. Then: "The Icarus Agenda." Another pause. "Why?"

Red looked over at him and started a little at the man's face. The short walk to the car in the sun had burned his nose and cheeks a vivid red, and the beads of sweat shining beneath his eyes and on his cheekbones made him look far worse than he sounded.

"I just wondered if we had the same taste in books." He took the bottle from his lap and handed it to Ressler. "We don't. Here, take a sip. Not too much at once. You need to keep hydrated.

'And so do I," he murmured to himself, with an eye on the sun.

3.

The first fifteen minutes in the car as it bounced its way over the uneven ground was beyond painful. At first, Ressler managed to divert his attention by going through the contents of the backpack, by attempting to resuscitate the phone, and then by putting everything back, but after that he was both too exhausted to do anything else, and had no way distract himself from the dismal jolting motion. Neither could he predict which way the car would bounce, or how well the old jeeps suspension would deal with the shocks. As a result, his stomach muscles involuntarily tightened in anticipation, stretching and pulling at his wound with ever turn of the wheel.

He kept silent for as long as he could, clenching his jaws and trying to lodge into his chair as if it were a baking form and he rising soufflé batter, but he kept inflating, and after a particularly jarring jolt he gasped out, "Could you PLEASE pick up the pace?"

"Going faster won't make it any less painful," Reddington replied.

"No, but it would make it go faster."

"We'll get to the road in a couple of minutes. Try to hold out until then. Why don't you check the glove compartment?"

Angrily, both because he hadn't thought to investigate it himself and because Reddington maintained his crawling, bouncing driving, Ressler knocked his knee against the small door to pop it open, and tried to reach inside without bending his upper body. He only half-succeeded, and hissed as he pulled the few items inside onto his lap.

"What did you find?"

"A map of some sort." His finger left ugly, brown-red smears on the printed paper. "Seems to be…these mountains. I think this is the quarry. There's writing on it, too. Xs. Hideouts, maybe? That might be useful when we…Aah, son of a-Are you trying to hit EVERY rock on this plain?"

"What else, apart from the map? No other phones?"

"No," Ressler sulked painfully. He wiped the bridge of his nose and his forehead, sorted through the mess on his lap. "I've got a pair of sunglasses. Here, they don't seem to be prescription."

Reddington shot him a glance, then accepted the shades with a nod of thanks and put them on.

"What's this? Looks like weed. Oh, Aspirin! And a packet of gum. Car papers. Apparently we killed a Gomez Cantar. Or the men who stole his jeep." He looked at the remnants, mainly candy wrappers, used tissues, torn vouchers and old receipts, gathered them and put them back in the compartment. The map, the aspirin, the weed and the papers he folded up and put into the backpack at his feet, with the other possibly useful items.

The car lurched, then finally rolled onto the road. It was in bad condition, but at least it was hard and relatively flat, and Reddington immediately accelerated.

There we go, Ressler thought, leaning his head against the window and closing his eyes against the glare of the sun. He still hurt, and every crack they drove over made him wince, but the sound of the motor soothed him and he felt as close to being comfortable for the first time since he'd been shot. We'll drive to the nearest house or gas station, find a phone, call in and go home. It'll be fine. I can handle another hour like this.

Reddington heard the first strange, grating sound about half an hour after they'd reached the road. Cursing internally, he shifted back. The sound continued for another ten seconds, then abated. The engine ran smoothly again—well, as smoothly as it had in the first place. He shot another glance at his companion. Ressler was out, hopefully sleeping, perhaps unconscious. One thing was certain, though: no passing cop would mistake him for a peacefully resting passenger. Apart from the sunburn, the man's face was a pasty white, at least where it wasn't smudged with dried blood. He wasn't losing those baffling amounts of sweat anymore, so either shock had worn off or he had become too dehydrated to produce perspiration, but a sheen of dampness covered every bit of bare skin visible, up to the freckled skin of his arms and shoulders.

Unless the sunburn was a fever flush, and he wasn't gushing sweat because the fever was burning him dry. If that was the case, Reddington might just as well toss him out of the car. If he developed a fever now, that meant that the bullet had hit his intestines or colon and their contents were poisoning him from the inside out. If sepsis had set in, things were, quite simply put, finished for Agent Ressler.

It was with some trepidation that Red rested the back of his hand against the younger man's cheek. Ressler muttered something, stirred and groaned without truly waking up, but Red shushed him: "It's nothing. Rest."

No fever. His face was warm, but not that shocking heat of septic fever. He'd survive for a couple of hours more.

What we need is a first aid kit. Well, that, and a surgeon and an O.R. The last two being absent, the first would be most welcome. Ressler didn't find one in the glove compartment, but who, in this empty country, would leave their home without their trusty kit tucked away securely in their car? Perhaps it's in the back, somewhere.

Unthinkingly, he accelerated again, and not long afterwards the engine started to growl again. This time it took much longer for the sound to go away, and an ominous wisp of smoke trailed up from below the hood.

And this is why you invest in proper equipment, Jorge. What if your men had been chasing us with this car? Really, what did you do with all those resources I sent you? Feed a gambling addiction?

He couldn't help feeling somewhat anxious, though. They were still in the middle of nowhere, with the hills and mountains of Cuatrociénegas rising up beside the road, looking bare, dry and forbidding in the scorching afternoon sun. He'd been to the Área de Protección de Flora y Fauna once, not too far away, but that had been in a brand new Humvee and with a picknick basket and a bottle of champagne in the back, not with an unconscious FBI agent riding shotgun. He had little desire to go sightseeing in these mountains.

They made it another ten kilometres further before the sound returned, even though Reddington barely drove faster than forty miles per hour. Red grimaced as both his hands squeezed the wheel tightly in reaction to the dreaded sound; the grip made his wounded arm protest. More smoke issued from the hood. He decelerated even more, but the smoke kept growing and turned a disturbing black.

"Well, if I'd have to make an educated guess, I'd say we've just blown out the engine," Red said aloud.

Ressler stirred. "What?" he croaked groggily.

At that moment the engine died completely and the car shuddered to a stop at the side of the road.

"Time to start hiking," Reddington said. He got out, opened the left back door and started searching for the medi-kit he was certain should be stashed away there. "Get the backpack; make sure you've got that map. And we need all the water we can carry as well. How long is that pill going to last you? You might want to take a couple of aspirins."

"Can't we repair the car?" He moaned as he dragged himself out of the car, cursed when the hood proved overheated and he burned his fingers.

"Don't open it! It'll release the smoke and we don't want Jorge tracking us like a ranger spotting an Indian village. And no, we can't repair it. We don't have the time and I, for one, don't have the skills."

"You don't?" Reddington guessed he should be flattered by the surprise in the other man's voice.

"Not with the equipment we have with us, right now—which is none. Ha!" He liberated the first aid kit from below the driver's seat. "Now let's have a look. Hmm. Restocking is not one of Gomez Cantar's stronger points. But it'll do." He turned to Ressler. "Do you think I can dress your wound when you're standing up and leaning against the jeep?"

"Do we have time for that?" was the return question. Apparently, his half-hour nap had done him a world of good. "Shouldn't we move up into those mountains, out of sight, first?"

"Feeling pretty spry, aren't we?" Red shrugged. "I'd rather clean and bandage an open wound on the relatively dust-free road, instead of in the bushes. Besides, how long do you think you'll be able to continue with that make-shift bandage? I'd rather do it now. I think we still have a couple of minutes."

"Fair enough. Want me to take a look at that scratch of yours?"

Red pushed the sunglasses up his forehead for effect, raised one eyebrow. "That 'scratch' of mine is doing just fine, thank you." He took one of the large bottles of spring water and uncapped it. "Lean back and find something to hold on to. I'll be as gentle as possible but it'll probably still be unpleasant."

Ressler positioned himself against the closed door of the jeep, finding grip inside the opened window. Reddington unwound the improvised bandage, noting that, while it was bloodied, the stain was not very large. When he got the sleeves unbound and gently tugged at the part stuck to the other man's skin, Ressler made a sound not unlike the engine previously, something low and grating, and Red carefully poured some water over the cloth to soak it off. When he pulled it away completely, he was started by a loud thunking noise, but it was only Ressler banging the back of his head against the roof of the car, so he ignored it and kept washing the wound and its surroundings until most of the dried blood was gone. He pulled up the hem of the undershirt and folded it up so he could have a better look.

Not that he could tell all that much without having a chance to look what the damage was on the inside. It was an ugly, red hole, larger than he would have liked, but he'd seen worse in his life.

"The bleeding seems to have stopped," Red ascertained with some relief. Of course, he might still be bleeding internally, but no one was served with that hypothesis. He very, very gently pushed back the rope of intestine trying to escape from the hole, making Ressler whimper and bang his head against the car again. "Better stop doing that, Donald; the last thing you need is a concussion. This will be over in a second. Now keep your head back and hold on tight, because this will hurt very badly."

The little plastic bottle of disinfectant was almost empty, but he sprayed what was left of it neatly into the wound, then immediately covered it up with the last remaining square piece of bandage. To his credit, Ressler didn't cry out; he just made another one of those high-pitched, grating sounds, then sagged, breathing hard. Red dropped the bottle and pressed his free hand against Ressler's chest, propping him up against the car as his knees buckled.

"Are you alright?"

"Huhhhhh…"

"Can you take your own weight again? I need to finish this." Even as he spoke, he gave Ressler's chest a reassuring pat before moving his hand—nice pecs, he noted absently—and took the roll of tape from the kit. He lipped the edge of it, pulled it out with his teeth and bit off a large piece so he could secure the square bandage to the agent's stomach. Another bit fastened it just above the waist of his pants. Unorthodox, perhaps, but it was of vital importance the wound remained as clean as possible, and he didn't want the bandage to move so much as an inch. After that, it was easy to wind six yards of gauze around the man's stomach, and he was finished before Ressler had recovered enough to speak.

"Don't…don't you need to take it out? That bullet? I thought you were going to take it out."

"I should." He tugged Resslers shirt down over the bandage, picked up the discarded bottle and tossed it back into the car. "But I can't. I'm not a surgeon, and I don't have the means. Apart from that, I seriously doubt you'd be up to any sort of physical activity if I did take it out. I…" He stopped. The walkie talkie had emitted a crackling hiss. Reaching inside, Ressler plucked it from the dashboard. It hissed again, but no matter what he did, the signal did not become any better.

"We're out of reach," Reddington concluded. Really should've invested in iPhones, Jorge.

"But there is activity. They are trying to reach our men."

"And they will notice that they won't receive and answer. Which means," He emptied the last remains of the medi-kit into the backpack, closed it and hoisted it onto his back, "that Jorge has stopped combing through the mine and will start looking for us elsewhere. He, or one of his men, will first check for the missing men. Finding their car stolen, they'll simply follow the road." And find the jeep here, abandoned. Thoughtfully, he regarded the road, but there really wasn't a place where they could hide it, not without losing valuable time. He pointed behind him. "We should go back a little. Jorge will expect us to go that way, and so we should make sure to go in the opposite direction."

"How far did we get, anyway?"

Reddington shrugged. "About seventy miles, maybe a bit less." Sixty-eight and a half, if he were correct and the mileage meter was accurate.

Ressler's face was unreadable. He just gave a nod and put the walkie talkie in the holder where he usually kept his cell phone. "We should take it," he explained. "As far as I know, these things can't be traced, but we'll know when they get close to us."

"Good thinking!" Red said brightly.

"Let's go."

The more or less professional bandage did make a difference, Ressler considered. It gave him more support and that somewhat diminished the pain. An additional bonus was that he had been able to don his long-sleeved shirt again. With his current office tan, it wasn't a pleasant idea to walk beneath the Mexican sun unprotected. He could already feel the skin of his nose and cheeks pulling tight with sunburn.

Reddington walked in front of him, maintaining a moderate but steady pace. His short-cropped head was reddening as well.

We'll get back from this looking tan and exercised, Ressler thought with forceful optimism. He pressed his hand a bit tighter to his belly. It was going well, he could keep up. Sure, he was sweating, and sure, he was in pain, but he was coping, damn it, and everything would end up fine.

"So what's that map telling you?" he rasped to the glistening red neck in front of him.

Reddington half-turned but kept walking. "Oh, it's fascinating."

"Yeah? How so?"

"Because it's a contour map with coordinates."

"I noticed that. Too bad I forgot to take my compass."

Reddington waved the arm on which he carried his watch. "I haven't."

Ressler frowned. "You have…a compass in…your watch?"

"Well, it's digital, but it's not that uncommon. Still not FBI standard issue? Tsk."

Ressler regarded his own watch. It was digital, had a stopwatch and a timer, it was waterproof and resistant to pressure, lit up in the dark and had a small light option he sometimes used when he couldn't find the keyhole to his garage. Additionally, it showed the date and could produce up to ten different kinds of alarms…but a compass, it did not have. "Huh." He wiped his face, then stumbled as he lost his balance and would have fallen if the other man hadn't steadied him.

"Have some more water." Reddington held out the large bottle. By now it was half empty.

He took a big swallow, then handed it back. "Shouldn't we…preserve some of it? Ration it?"

Reddington's mouth did that funny little lip-press that looked like a half-smile but wasn't really. "Donald, unless I get you onto the operating table within a day, you're most likely going to die. We might as well try to keep you in the best condition possible. Don't worry, I'll make sure I'll have enough left to last me as I continue on alone."

Ressler didn't reply. He wouldn't know what to say. It would have been nice to be witty and come up with a really scathing reply, but unfortunately that wasn't the way his brains worked, and they were decidedly slow at the moment.

"A contour map with coordinates," he repeated instead. "Anything we're heading for, led by your all-knowing watch?"

Reddington showed him the map and tapped his pointed finger on one of the Xs with a scribbled string of numbers above it. "Here. It's the closest X to our position. Hopefully, it'll be a building and have a phone. If not, it might have electricity so we can charge the cell we found in the car. In any case it will be some kind of shelter."

"Or a place where they store cocaine."

"Or that. In which case we'll die happy," Reddington deadpanned. He folded the map back up and put it in his pocket. "Jorge isn't all that much into cocaine. He's more of an arms dealer." He began to walk again.

Ressler followed him, a little more slowly. He wanted to ask how long it would take them to get to place X, but decided he really didn't want to know if Reddington didn't volunteer the information. "Who is this Jorge anyway? I thought he was supposed to be one of your own guys."

"He is. Or he was."

"So what happened? Any theories why he went from an ally to a man who wants you dead?"

Reddington laughed. "I'm never short on theories, just none that sounds plausible. But don't worry, Donald, I'll find out. I always do."

Clean your house, huh? I bet you do. You're like a globe-trotting Godfather.

Reddington seemed to find the silence unpleasant. "Have you ever been to Sacra Maria, Donald? It's in Chihuahua, a tiny little town a couple of hundred miles south of Chihuahua itself."

"No."

"It's lovely. I happened upon it purely by accident, when I was travelling through Mexico for business purposes. Things were hectic, and I was very tired. Dembe was elsewhere occupied, and I'd been driving for a very long time…Anyway, I arrived in the evening, booked a hotel and might never have looked back if I hadn't decided to have a cup of coffee in the market place." He smiled. Ressler hadn't consciously noticed he'd slowed down, but now found him walking next to him. As a matter of fact, he had taken Ressler's arm and was more or less supporting his sometimes unsure steps. "As it turned out," Reddington continued, "the third Wednesday of every month, Sacra Maria staged a donkey and flower market. Donkeys were sold and bought, but mainly, they were there so children could pet and ride on them while their parents drank punch and fresh juice in the shade.

'The women sold flower garlands they had made themselves. Only about half of them were sold, though, and in the evening they decorated the donkeys and the children with them." Again, he paused for a moment.

'I'm sure you're familiar with coming home, or arriving at a place after a long, trying journey and discovering that that place holds everything you need, in just the right quantity, at that particular moment. Are you?"

Ressler thought about Audrey, and apple pie, and the smoky scent of a lit fireplace. "Yes. I think I am."

Reddington nodded. "Sacra Maria was that place, for me, that day. The mixed scents of tiles warmed by the sun, flowers, donkeys…the delighted screams of children and the musical voices of the women praising their wares…And the astonishingly sweet taste of fresh orange juice. It was as if the twenty-first century had skipped this town—no cell phones, no speeding cars; everyone was unhurried and friendly. People were chatting with one another instead of staring at their laptops. Of course, it was only a façade," he said with a shrug. "In the evening, when the children went to bed, the donkeys were loaded up into transport wagons and taken to their new owners, were they probably had to work hard until the next donkey market. The next day, life went on. But that one day, that was magical to me."

Ressler made an enquiring noise. Yes. And?

"Jorge was the man who led me to the person who placed a bomb in the centre of the market place, and blew up 127 donkeys and twenty-two men, women and children, and gravely injured three times that number, in a failed attempt to kill a magistrate. One of those that was injured, was Jorge's wife; she lost both her legs. He helped me, and I brought him the man responsible. And that is why I can't figure out why he's switched sides now."

4.

Ressler knew something about collateral damage. Hell, a couple of months ago, he had almost become it himself. He'd been the cause of some, mostly during his hunt for Reddington. One man, sometimes two at once. He'd shot people, had them arrested, used them as bait for bigger and related fish…some of them might have been innocent. But he'd never been willing to risk the lives civilians and he never really understood how anyone could reason that so many innocent casualties weighed up against the life or death of one man.

Perhaps it was the sun, or maybe it was Reddington's voice, but for a second he could picture that moment at the donkey market as if he'd been there himself: the easy, sunny square with the velvet-eared animals, the laughing children, the cheerful people. Then BOOM! the explosion and that split second everyone in the near vicinity must have understood that they were going to die. Donkeys flying, ripped apart and crashing to the ground in bits and pieces like a gruesome red hail, people and animals screaming. Smoke, confusion, pain, death. A severed donkey head and a dismembered child lying next to one another on the torn-up pavement.

"Twenty-two, huh?"

"Twenty-two, of which seventeen children, and 127 donkeys."

"Were you there when it happened?"

Reddington shook his head. "No. I heard about it later."

"How did you get…into contact with Jorge?"

"Chance." The short reply told Ressler he wouldn't get a more detailed answer.

They walked on for a while, Reddington holding out his hand when they had to climb steep slopes or when the footing was rough, Ressler grasping his wrist for support with less and less reserve. His own reserves were quickly depleting again. What he really wanted to ask was how far they still had to go until they reached the X on the map, but he didn't dare to. He wasn't sure how his body would react to the message that they'd had to walk, say, another twenty miles. No, it was better not to know and simply keep going. He could do that. Sometimes it made him think of severed fingers, but that only served to make him grit his teeth and double his efforts.

He tried not to look at his watch too often, as time had started taking strange leaps and pauses. For an indefinite time, it never seemed to become later than two-ten, no matter how many agonizing steps he had taken. Yet when he glanced at the watch again, he noticed, to his surprise, that they had been walking for an hour. The road had long since disappeared from view, and they were rising. Two hours, and it was as if they'd been hiking for weeks; no sign of civilization, just rock and grass and a few bushes here and there.

He'd fallen back into that strange, half-dreaming state he'd also entered in the mine, in which he experienced a very vivid awareness of discomfort, exhaustion and pain, yet somehow distant, as if he were dreaming. It made travelling both easier and harder, because while he was able to move and even climb almost mindlessly, stumbling still hurt, and in his dream-like state he wasn't able to pick out rocks on the road.

Once, Reddington made him sit down in a narrow spot of shadow and fed him two aspirins with more water. He also poured some of the precious liquid over his head, proceeding to do the same for himself.

"I must say, Agent Ressler, you'd doing exceptionally well," he praised as they both sat there, dripping and red-faced. "Although," he added, seemingly a few seconds later, "you probably shouldn't fall asleep here." Ressler blinked. He couldn't recall falling asleep, but the water on his face had dissipated and his hair was only damp, now. "We should be going in another moment or so. How's your radio?"

Radio? Oh, right. He fished the thing out of his holder. Every once in a while it emitted a crackle, but so far, no voices could be distinguished. That was good, wasn't it? He had to repress a moan when Reddington got to his feet again and held out a commanding hand to him, couldn't repress the same moan when he was pulled to his feet. To make things worse, his leg gave a twinge, a dull throb that wouldn't go away now he'd noticed it.

Reddington had noticed it as well. "You're limping. Do you have blisters? We can't…"

"No. Someone shot me in the leg about…oh…two months ago. Didn't you know?"

The other man laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. Apparently, Ressler getting shot was an endless source of amusement for him. And then he made him walk three hours more, until the sun dipped behind the mountains and crickets started up a deafening concert in the short, dry grass.

By this time, they were no longer talking and Reddington's shoulders were drooping beneath the heavy, water-filled backpack. He was checking his watch more often, anxious they'd climb the wrong slope or take a wrong path and miss the X location. It was taking longer to find the elusive destination than he'd expected, and he wasn't sure he could blame it on Ressler.

Should've pushed on harder, not taken that many rests. But he had needed those breaks as much as the FBI agent. Raymond Reddington might be very well able to defend himself and take care of himself, but he was no longer twenty, or even thirty, and lugging three gallons of water around while climbing admittedly not very sheer but still sizable mountains, in the hot sun, was not something he was used to anymore. The wound in his arm was throbbing dully and both his feet and his back ached—nothing really bad, but not pleasant either.

You've become soft, he accused himself. Got too fond of the good life. And you should know better, really, especially after Anslo. That's what really went wrong today, wasn't it? Your mindless conviction that Jorge was your man. Didn't that highly unpleasant business with Grey teach you anything? Loyalty is only skin-deep. Grey had told him 'they' had threatened his family. Red wondered if Jorge had the same excuse.

He discovered the X point almost by accident as his eyes absentmindedly followed a swallow's low, seemingly erratic flight into a valley below and lost it against the darkness of the square little building. He let out a satisfied 'Ah!' and stopped in his tracks, only to reel as Ressler blindly stumbled into him. Red regained his balance; Ressler wasn't so lucky and tottered, arms wheeling, before he let himself drop to his knees with a grunt of pain.

"What the hell, Reddington?" he asked hoarsely, clutching his stomach.

"I've found our X spot," Red said. "No, don't get up. You'd better stay here while I check the place out, see if it's safe."

Ressler shook his head. "No. I'm coming with you." He tried to get up, but the long hike had taken its toll on him too, and without Reddington's proffered hand to get up, he just couldn't manage. After three failed attempts he simply sat, panting painfully, one hand clasped against his wound and the other on the ground supporting him, glaring up at the older man.

"You can't even get up on your own," Reddington added insult—if truth—to injury. "Stay here. You'd only get in my way. I'll see if the building's abandoned and if it has a phone. If it's safe, I'll return and get you. If it's not…well, you'll either see me very soon, or never again, depending on whether I'm discovered or not."

"I could watch your back," Ressler said stubbornly—the man truly didn't like to admit defeat, did he?—but Reddington simply laughed, dropped the heavy rucksack next to him and left him sprawled on the rocky path.

He spent a few moments figuring out from which direction he should approach the small house, but after some deliberation he simply decided to take the most straightforward way. The valley was cast in shadow, and anyway, they would either see him or they wouldn't, it wasn't if anyone inside could predict the direction he'd be coming from. Of course, it was very well possible that Jorge and his men hadn't noticed the map was missing, or even known of its existence. Without a compass, stumbling onto this building by pure luck was extremely unlikely.

Still, he took his time descending the slope, checking for movement or inhabitancy.

Nothing. The door of the building was closed, the windows dark and dusty.

He snuck up to one side of the building, keeping well below the windows that looked out on all sides. As far as he could establish, the house was completely square, about nine by nine m2, and it seemed as if no one had visited it recently. A hideout, perhaps?

Red pressed his ear to the door and simply sat, listening for several long moments, but apart from the crickets in the grass he could hear nothing. Finally, he crept around the wall and reached a door. It was locked, but the window a few yards further down was not, and he was able to jam it open and enter the building that way.

Once inside, it became even more obvious that the building was truly abandoned, or at least not been in recent use. A thick layer of dust lay on the spare furniture in the first room he came into: a table, four old wooden chairs, a ratty couch and a dented cabinet. A full ash tray sat on the table, but even the cigarette butts had lost their smell; all the building smelled like was dry stuffiness, like every empty building that had been closed to the outside air for too long. Next to one window, a gas camp stove sported an empty pan. A mostly empty packet of instant coffee leaned against the gas bottle. Good. Coffee is an option. What luxury!

Quickly, Reddington searched the rest of the shack. He did not find a phone, but detected a generator in the corner of the second room, tucked away behind a wooden partition. Four mattresses, stacked on top of one another, lay in the other corner, topped by a couple of unevenly folded blankets. To his surprise, another partition hid away a very respectable toilet; it even had a seat. He wasn't sure if it had any water to flush with; an empty bucket lay on its side beside it and so far he hadn't found a working tap.

It was safe, though, he decided, and it would see Ressler and him through the night in relative comfort. If he could get the generator to work, it might even see them home, but he didn't want to get his hopes up yet in that respect.

When he left the building, unlocking the door from the inside as he went, dusk was creeping in, casting the higher hills and mountains into a sharp relief against the sky. It took him a while to orient himself from which direction he had come, and even longer to climb back up to Ressler's position. By the time he'd reached him, it was almost dark, and he would have missed him if he had worn a darker shirt.

"It's me," he called softly, and saw a slight movement—the semi-automatic dropping from where it was aimed at his chest.

"Great," Ressler whispered, and made another attempt to get up. This time, by making a rolling half-turn, he managed, but he stood in a hunched, unstable way, and he was swaying alarmingly. "Here's your backpack. How about X?"

"Long deserted."

"Phone?"

"No. But there's a generator that might work."

"Might."

"Might. It's a roof above our heads, anyway, and there might even be something to eat."

Ressler grimaced. "I packed you a sandwich, remember?"

Reddington frowned. "I ate that this afternoon. I offered you half of it. Don't you remember?"

"No. Did you…? No." His mouth twisted in the faintest of smiles. "I don't think I should eat, anyway," he added, gesturing vaguely at his belly. The movement made him waver and Reddington grabbed his shoulder to steady him.

Hot. His skin radiated heat through the thin cotton of his shirt.

"Come on," he said. While you still can.

It took them another half hour to reach the house, and Reddington was extremely glad he'd taken the time to investigate previously. Ressler was pretty much done for, and so was he, by now, after carrying most of the man's weight. He got them both inside, steered Ressler to the backroom and dropped him on top of the stacked mattresses, where he curled up on his side, exhausted.

Red left him for the moment. Taking the cell phone out of the backpack, he attached the charger and searched for a power-point. He found a distributing-plug near the generator and plugged in the phone. The generator was, of course, either empty or as-good-as-empty, and no jerry can in sight.

Well, all we can do is pray, I guess. He flipped the generator switch. It coughed a few times, then, to his delight, started up, producing a healthy growling hum. Pray successful. Thank you. In the other room, a light switched on. Red hurried to turn it off, wanting to preserve every last watt for the phone.

Ten seconds. Fifteen. Twenty seconds of charging. He pressed the on/off button of the cell—an old Samsung, nothing sophisticated, probably not even 'smart', and huffed in relief as the screen came on, asking for a password. He tried 0000 and was rewarded with a 'loading sim' message.

The generator hiccoughed.

"No," he told it sternly. "Keep going for another minute. After that horrid car experience, that's the least thing you owe me."

"Is it working?" Ressler asked from behind him. He'd sat up again and was holding out his hand for the phone. "Give it to me, let me call us in."

The sim card finished loading, making way for a welcome screen with a photo of two small children on it. For one second, Red fatalistically feared they had no connection, but then a single bar showed that they were in range of the nearest cell tower. Red handed the phone over to Ressler, who immediately typed in a number. The generator coughed again, faltered. Red gave it a well-placed kick, and it kept going.

He listened to Ressler hurrying through his identification code and request for extraction.

"What do you mean, negative?" He heard Ressler say, and wasted no time snatching the phone out of his hand and breaking the connection.

"They're not coming for us, are they?" he asked, even as he was typing in Dembe's number. Ressler muttered something about international policies, but broke off to stare, horrified, at the generator, as it gave a last loud cough and shuddered to a halt.

"The power…"

"I noticed, Donald. Shut up."

He pressed the call button. The phone'd had about two minutes to charge up; it'd just have to do. Luckily, Dembe picked up after the first ring, as Red had known he would.

"I'm here," was all he said.

"I need you to pick us up at the following coordinates," Red said in Arabic. Even if Jorge—or anyone else, for that matter—somehow managed to pick up on this call, the chances of him actually understanding that language were extremely slim.

"Speak," Dembe replied in the same language. Red gave him the coordinates. "Noted."

"Where are you?"

"In the city of the candy store." Piedras Negras, then.

"What's your ETA?" Where on earth are WE, more specifically? He heard the rustling of a map and the beep of a tablet starting up, a woman's voice in the background and Dembe's short, "Be silent, please," to her.

"Approximately five hours. I can make it in four."

"Be swift, but not hasty," Red admonished. "Don't attract unwarranted attention. Also, we need a fully stocked medical kit and a round of antibiotics. Not for me. Call this number," he spoke it once, very clearly, then repeated it again, "and ask for Callaghan. He'll get you the antibiotics without a subscription, within fifteen minutes. Get vicodin as well."

"I am on my way. Salaam ya akhi."

"Wait. We're in the mountains. We won't be able to…" at that moment the phone gave three short beeps, and Red hurried on, "We can't meet you at the road. You'll have to come up and…" The phone gave one more peep, went dark and died. "…find us."

He slowly lowered the hand holding the cell to his knee. Then he shrugged. Dembe was one of the most competent men he knew. He would have figured out that things with Jorge had quite literally blown up in their faces and that he'd have to be careful. Hopefully, he'd be able to keep Lizzie in check as well.

"You've reached him? They're coming to pick us up?" Ressler managed to sound both anxious and completely flat at the same time.

"Yes." Shaking himself, he put the phone down on the ground and faced Ressler with a confident smile. The man had lain down again and was looking up at him through heavy-lidded eyes. "They'll be here in about five hours."

"Five. Right…" He closed his eyes, quickly opened them again. Despite the sunburn, his face was oddly white in the moonlight. "That language you were speaking…it's the same, isn't it? The same as…in the box."

"It is."

"What is it?"

"Have you ever studied the Quran, Donald? It's a compelling book. Beautiful language, amazingly detailed historical descriptions, truly fascinating imagery."

"Yeah, I know," Ressler said, and Reddington was honestly surprised.

"You've read the Quran?" He'd thought Ressler to be more of a thriller type.

"Well, a translation, obviously. Know the way your enemies think, and all that. I know how Christians tick; makes sense knowing how Muslims tick, too."

"Not all Muslims are your enemy. On the contrary, far out the most aren't."

"If the men you're trying to catch are Muslim, they are," Ressler said stubbornly.

"Still, it'd make more sense studying the sharia law than the Quran, then. Just like the Bible, the Quran is only a guideline. The way that guideline is followed, depends on how orthodox or extremist its followers are."

"Are you a Muslim?"

Red thought on this for a while. "Sometimes," he concluded.

Ressler huffed a laugh. "Isn't that a contradictio in terminis for a true Muslim?"

"Yes, which is why I wouldn't call myself a true Muslim, or a Christian or Buddhist, for that matter. Religion is such a strange thing—as is faith. I've studied many religions, simply out of curiosity, but if you lead the life I do, it's hard to pray to a god and believe that anything good will come of it." He smiled a little. "I've killed. I've stolen. I've deceived. I've desired and seduced other men's women and treated other people in ways I never want to be treated myself. In short, I've done everything every religion denounces. And I will do it again, perhaps not wholly without remorse, but I will. It's hard to rhyme that with the sharia. Or with Christian doctrine."

"Huh."

"See, that's what I like about you, Donald. You surprise me. There were were, setting out for a simple meeting with a contact of mine, and here we are now, discussing religion in a pied-a-terre in the middle of the mountains." He sat down on the edge of the pile of mattresses, making sure he didn't jar or touch the other man's side. "You must tell me: how were you brought up?"

Ressler didn't reply, his eyes drooping closed. Either he was unwilling to discuss that particular subject, or he simply wasn't up to it anymore. Red studied him in the surprisingly clear moonlight, taking in the blotchy skin, the beads of sweat on his brow, and touched the back of his hand to the other man's cheek.

Well, damn it. The man was burning up.

Ressler's eyes opened, the pupils flaring and rendering his eyes almost black. "I don't think I'm doing very well," he offered, almost apologetically.

Red shrugged. "You're a bit warm. I may need to find a way to get that bullet out of you after all."

"Hooray," said Ressler tonelessly.

After he put down the phone, Dembe pursed his lips and tried to ignore the Keen woman who was shooting questions at like a verbally-loaded machine gun: "Who was that? Was that Reddington? Where are they? Did something go wrong? What'd he say? Are they alright?"

"Please, let me think for a moment." To her credit, she became quiet, but he could feel her eyes on him as he deliberated the situation. Raymond, may he go with God, was able to assess a situation in a fraction of a second and come up with a multi-faceted plan in the blink of an eye, but Dembe liked to think things through before he took any kind of action. He'd rather take one minute to put everything in context now, than spring into action and find out he'd missed something a few hours later.

Raymond was safe, or relatively safe. The phone he'd used was not his; and he hadn't been able to deliver everything he wanted to say. However, the phone had given warning it was running out of battery, so his problem was power rather than immediate danger. Additionally, he had judged it necessary to speak Arabic, but had given his position in stark coordinates, so he was only being careful, not actually compromised.

He had said he was in the mountains and unable to make it to the road. Combined with the request for medical supplies and antibiotics, that meant that his inability to move could be blamed on Agent Ressler. Apparently he was wounded; either shot or stabbed, if antibiotics were required. Raymond was an honourable man, but he was also a practical one, so the reason he wouldn't leave the agent probably had something to do with either gratitude or responsibility.

So be it, Reddington was stuck. By car, it would take Dembe between four and five hours to reach him. Jorge Flores Diaz had had Raymond and the agent picked up by helicopter, and Raymond's jet was stationed in San Antonio, because it had been impossible to find it a place in Piedras Negras, Reddington hadn't expected to need it anytime soon, and the pilot had a wedding to attend there. It would take time to call him back, although less than it would take to find a temporary replacement. And it would save time when they returned—time that may prove vital if Agent Ressler had indeed been shot.

If the agent had been shot, and they had had, no matter how brief, had access to a phone, Ressler would have called in to get them picked up. Raymond would not have liked that, but it was the most sensible thing to do. The fact that he had called Dembe to extract them meant that the FBI had once more left their agents to die and wouldn't do a thing to help them.

So, first things first. First a call this Callaghan person for medical supplies. Next, a message to Victor, for the plane. He'd leave it to Victor to find a place to land it as close as possible to Raymond's coordinates. Then get enough gas to make it to said coordinates without a tank stop. Update the Keen woman and get her to buy food, water, salt and sugar supplements. He wanted to be on the road in fifteen minutes.

"Well?" Elizabeth Keen asked when his eyes focused and he picked up his cell again.

"There are a few things I need you to do," Dembe said with quiet authority.

5.

There were several things Ressler was distinctly unhappy about. Some of those things were rather obvious, like the ever-growing, dismal pain in his abdomen and the added discomfort of the fever raging through his blood, which muddled his thought and made his limbs heavy and his body ache. Worse was the shivering, which had started almost the moment he'd lain down—a side effect of the fever, he knew, but exceptionally painful with a shot wound.

Knowing that Reddington was probably going to dig into him to try and save his life—again!—held little appeal either. He'd never had cavities, but he imagined the dread he felt now was something resembling the fear people with bad teeth had whenever they entered the dentist's waiting room. Only about a hundred times worse. At least the dentist, unless he was a sadist, would sedate his patients. And he probably wouldn't poke into their open wounds, either. He tried not to squirm while Reddington puttered about the room, looking for instruments suitable for poking and digging.

Other things were less obvious, or even logical. They bothered him nevertheless.

He detested the fact that Reddington kept calling him 'Donald'. No one ever called him Donald anymore, and very few people ever had. His friends called him Don, or Donnie, which he also hated. Even Audrey only called him Don, unless she wanted to tease him, and used Donnie as well. Only his parents, when he was small, used his full name, usually in combination with his last name. "Donald Ressler, will you get out of that tree this instance before you break a leg!" Or: "Donalllld. I know you're there. I can smell you, Donald. Come on out, boy, don't make me come and look for you, you fucking little bitch!" Or: "I'm very disappointed in you, Donald. You know aunt Betty was killed by a drunk driver; how can you be so irresponsible!" Or: "I don't understand you, Donald. You know how much it'd mean to him to see your face. He doesn't have much time left, why don't you just swallow your pride and visit him?"

It occurred to him he hadn't seen his mother in…what was it? Twelve months, now? He hadn't even told her he'd been shot—the last thing he'd wanted was to see her turn up at his bedside. She would've been happy to see he and Audrey were back together, though. She liked Audrey. Hell, everybody liked Audrey, what was not to like? She was sweet, funny, sensible and pretty. She was smart and crazy and lovely.

"How could you let her go?" his mother had asked, when she'd found out Audrey had packed her bags. He thought that might have been the last time he'd seen her, his mother. Because she'd been right: he was a fool for letting her go. He'd known that. Everybody knew that. The problem was that he couldn't help himself. He was the kind of person who started things and then kept doing them until they were finished. Donald Ressler never abandoned a crossword puzzle. He tried to avoid them, because he really sucked at doing crossword puzzles, but whenever he started one, he wouldn't rest until it was solved. When he was a child, he played King's Quest games and did not give up until he'd completed them, not even the old, text command-based ones. He'd been great at football because he'd just keep going. Which was also why he'd had to stop: if you keep on running with a broken collar bone until someone smashes into you and breaks your tibia and you still try to get up and then need to spend two months in recovery, it's probably smarter to just not rise to the challenge. It was the same with Reddington.

"Don, how can you marry me if you're engaged to this mission of yours?" Audrey had asked him, exasperated, after they'd tried to plan their wedding for the third time that year, and he'd simply been unable to guarantee a day he'd be present. And when he'd stared at her, almost helpless, because try as he might, he simply COULDN'T promise he'd abandon his job for her, she'd smiled that beautiful sad lopsided smile she'd smiled so often the last couple of months, and said, "Making you choose would be cruel and unrealistic, wouldn't it?"

She hadn't ransomed his love for her; hadn't made him choose. They hadn't fought, and she hadn't incriminated him or called him worthless. He only loved her, after all; she wasn't a challenge he had to win over—he'd won her a long time ago. And so he lost her, quietly, without a real fight, because by the time he'd realized there was a challenge to meet here, as well, she was gone and Reddington had moved to Europe. Then Brussels had happened, and he'd screwed up—Ressler was an extremely effective FBI agent, but somehow Reddington always managed to set him, and anyone trailing him on the wrong track. Made him look like an idiot.

Maybe I AM an idiot. Maybe he's just too smart for me. Indirectly, he did bring Audrey back to me, though.

He started out of his half-doze when Reddington sat himself back down on the edge of the mattresses.

"Found an O.R.?" He had to press his lips together to keep his teeth from chattering. A bunch of blankets lay folded underneath his head, but he lacked the coordination to pull one out and spread it over himself.

Red cracked his neck from side to side, rubbed his red-burned, close-cropped scalp. "Fever makes you sardonic, Donald? I wonder what you're like drunk. No, I didn't locate an O.R., but I did find this first aid kit. It doesn't hold much, but at least we're no longer short on bandages, iodine and disinfectant. Unfortunately, a pair of forceps is sadly lacking. All it has are these." He held up a bright blue plastic pair of pincers, probably intended to remove ticks or small splinters.

"That's not going to work." Ressler muttered. Although that bullet was a bit like an internal tick. A fat round little bloodsucking tick, dug in deep and snug between the warm loops of his intestines.

"It may have to. Unless Jorge had you shot with armour piercing bullets, in which case I might be able to use these." He indicated the package of butterfly fridge magnets he had laid out on his knee. "Considering the fact that that bullet's still inside of you and didn't blow a hole in your back the size of a dinner plate, I'm afraid they'll make for pretty decoration but attract preciously little in the way of lead."

Well, shit. Ressler regarded the stupid plastic pincers. They couldn't be more than three, four inches long. "There's no way you can use those to…"

"You have one of those pills left, haven't you?" Reddington interrupted him. "Take it now. You'll need it."

Ressler twisted his arm to reach into his back pocket, hissed as his abdominal muscles stretched and somewhat plaintively held his wallet out to Reddington. His fingers started shaking the moment he held something. The other man liberated the last pill, helped Ressler sit up so he could swallow it down with some water before helping him back down. Next, he took the walkie talkie Ressler still carried in his mobile holder and placed it on the floor. It hadn't made a sound in ages. Noticing Ressler shiver, he also spread one of the blankets over him. Once again, he touched a cool, dry palm to Ressler's face, pressed two fingers in his neck.

Ressler was not much surprised to find he had not miraculously been healed.

"Alright," Reddington said, pulling his hand back and turning to face him. "There actually is a thermometer in this kit, but I can tell you straight away that at the moment, you're running a fever of about 103 degrees, and it seems to be rising despite the fact that you're no longer active. This is unfortunate."

No shit, Sherlock. So is feeling like this because I heroically tried to save your life. Ressler practiced stoic silence while Reddington spoke on. He desperately wanted to sleep and make the operation-happy criminal sitting at his side as if he were going to read him a bedtime story go away.

"Because you should have a say in this as well, let me give you your options," Reddington said. "This type of fever can have two possible causes. The first is that the bullet hit your colon and the contents of your bowels are now in your abdominal cavity, causing sepsis. If that is the case, you will most likely die." Somehow, the matter-of-factness of his voice was a comfort. A very strange and fucked up kind of comfort, but one nevertheless. "The second possibility is, that pollutes were drawn in with the bullet, a piece of your shirt, most likely, and that this is causing an infection. Are you listening to me, Donald?"

Ressler shook himself. "Crystal."

Reddington blinked, momentarily confused, then nodded. "Now, in the first case, removing that bullet might do you more harm than good, as it may in fact be plugging, or at least obstructing the hole in your intestines, and taking it out would only create a wider path for the poison. Personally, I think chances of this, the bullet serving as a plug, I mean, are very slim, as we've been walking all day and there's very little chance that bullet remained in place in that lovely soft tissue all that time. But again, if this is the case, removing the bullet will do little to no good and I might just as well spare you the pain as you'll die anyway."

Ressler silently waited for the second option.

"Now, if the fever is caused by an infection, which is also a form of sepsis, but one we may yet get under control, taking out the cause may buy you enough time to survive until we get you on antibiotics. If you're extremely lucky," he smiled a little, "you may even survive without."

"And your professional opinion is?"

Reddington shrugged. "It's not a professional opinion. As I told you before, I'm not a doctor. I followed a couple of courses and had some experience in the field, that's all."

"Uhuh." Courses that taught a man exactly where to cut to lay bare a major artery and how to use gunpowder to cauterize it. Or maybe that was field experience. He'd have hated to have been Reddington's learning curve. "And what's that field experience telling you, then?"

The other man regarded him with hooded eyes for a few seconds, then gave another small shrug. "I'm not looking forward to reaching elbow-deep into your innards, but I'd say that's the best chance you've got. If your gut'd been torn, you'd have developed a fever much sooner; as a matter of fact, you'd probably be dead already. Instead, you spent most of the day hiking."

"I have a high pain tolerance."

"Blood poisoning doesn't really have all that much to do with pain tolerance," Reddington said dryly. Ressler lay quiet, pondering. "I'd need to cauterize it, as well," Reddington added, and Ressler made a sound that was half laugh, half sob.

"You really know how to ask a woman to dance, don't you?"

He blinked. That wasn't what he was about to say at all. But somehow he'd connected 'cauterize' to Audrey and burnt steaks in a restaurant with a live band, and something she'd said after he'd remarked on the quality of the meat. "I mean…"

"I think I know what you mean, my friend," Reddington said with a mixture of amusement and empathy. He made that smile-that-wasn't-a-smile expression again. "So. What's it going to be?"

Ressler cursed silently. "You know. I don't want to die. Do what you have to do."

Reddington nodded. "Wait here while I make my preparations."

"I'm not going anywhere, am I?" Ressler said bitterly. He thought about Audrey. And he was simultaneously extremely sorry and extremely glad she wasn't here.

Every few moments, Red looked out of the window to see if he saw any movement outside. He never did; the moonlit valley was peaceful, the only movement when a cloud momentarily passed the moon. Well, that was good, because he'd need light to remove the bullet, and Ressler was doubtlessly going to scream, both of which would be just perfect to give away their position.

Well, can't help that, I suppose. Unless you let him die, and that would be bad manners after he spared you such a nasty injury. The both of them were lucky, he supposed. If it had been him instead of Ressler, the agent wouldn't have had a clue how to get them out of there, and he'd have been even more clueless when it came to treating bullet wounds. They would both have died in the mines. Although…shouldn't sell the boy short. He's not stupid, just dull. He might be quite efficient, who knows.

As he first scrubbed out the kettle on the camp stove with a bit of dishwashing soap he'd found in the same cupboard where he had also found, amongst other things, the first aid kit, a working lantern and four sets of stainless steel cutlery, and then put on about half a litre to boil, he reflected that he was very happy indeed it was not him that had been shot. Not that he was glad the younger man was once again at his mercy—when you saved someone's life they became your responsibility, the saying went, and while he disregarded most sayings, he did agree with this one. And he wasn't at all eager to be responsible for agent Ressler who, in his almost adorably stubborn, clumsy way had messed up quite a number of Red's operations. More than he knew, actually. But you are! Once is chance, twice is fate, thrice would be a sign of the gods you don't believe in. His life is yours, and every decision he makes after today, will be because you saved him.

He sighed and checked the window. Everything was tightly shut, although the windows could not be locked. Even through the glass he could hear the whine of the crickets, or perhaps a cicada and he figured that that was probably the best guard dog he could wish for. If someone entered the clearing, the insects would fall silent.

When the water began to stir, Red walked back to the other room to lay out the bandages and set up the flashlight so it would focus on the correct spot. Ressler lay curled up on the improvised bed, shivering and unresponsive, looking like the world's largest and sickest shrimp. So what are you going to do if, and only if, you manage to get this bullet out of him, eh? He's not going to jump up and do a jig, you know. Dembe can't reach you directly, they'll have to come here, and unless they've found a helicopter, you've still a ways to go before you get anywhere safe. Like he said, for the next couple of days, Ressler's not going anywhere. And if Lizzie's coming along with Dembe, as you know she will, she won't abandon him here. After all, he's her partner. She's kind-hearted like that.

He positioned the torch on a chair he dragged in from the other room with the help of the Ludlum, selected gauze, bandages, iodine and disinfectant and placed them neatly on the same chair. The pincers he carried back to the sitting room part of the little house and dropped into the bubbling water.

Not too long. Wouldn't do to have them melt. He turned off the gas and stood staring at it for a moment. So far, he hadn't found anything he could use to cauterize the wound apart from the stainless steel knives. If nothing else turned up, that would have to do. Then again, perhaps it wasn't such a good idea, as he might end up burning otherwise undamaged intestines.

We'll see.

He waited half an hour for the water to cool down a little, washed his hands, collected the pan and his instruments and went to wake up Ressler.

"I need you to lie on your other side." A bunched up blanket ensured he was positioned in such a way that Reddington could follow the path of the bullet the way it had entered: vaguely diagonally from a little above the right hip and then inward.

Ressler groaned as Red started to remove his bandages. "You know…maybe we should wait. Until they find us. I'll be fine for a few more hours."

"No, you won't. Believe me, I wouldn't do this if I thought you'd be better off if I didn't. Here's your wallet, bite down on it." Without further ado, he shoved it between the man's teeth, effectively shutting him up. "Hold on to something, you don't want to move while I'm busy." He waited until Ressler had taken hold of the edge of the mattress, turned on the flashlight and folded the pages of the Ludlum more securely around it, dipped his hand into the pan of water and pulled out the warm pincers. "Here we go."

Finding a bullet in the soft tissue of someone's abdominal cavity was rather like looking for a stone in a pan of spaghetti bolognaise: doable, but quite hard if you didn't want to cut or stir the spaghetti. Intestines moved; they unwound, pulled up, churned, were shifted by their own peristaltic movements. Finding the same stone while the pan of spaghetti twitched and moaned and clenched and eventually screamed, was even harder. It was possible to ignore the screams, but they grated on the nerves and distracted from what was incredibly delicate work.

Unfortunately for Ressler, now he wasn't suffering from acute blood loss as he had in the glass box, he didn't lose consciousness quite as quickly, and even though he tried to keep still, his muscles were spasming all over the place.

Red had already decided that he'd make one attempt to try and find the bullet; any more and he'd definitely do more damage than good. The thing was, if he caught the bullet but not the thing that was actually causing sepsis, it was all for nought anyway and truly, he didn't enjoy making the younger man suffer. Not this way, not physically. He might play head games with Ressler, but he didn't want to hurt him, or see him hurt. That would be unnecessarily cruel and Reddington had never been cruel.

And so he ignored Ressler's increasingly louder exclamations of pain and gently, carefully felt his way along the bullet's trajectory, pressing slowly, slowly forward and up and inside until his fingers touched skin and he still hadn't met any resistance. Then he shifted his grip on the pincers and pushed his fingers inside, and had to stop because Ressler's back was arching so much he was afraid he was going to lose his pincers.

"Just a little more. I'm almost there," he said soothingly. "Hang on in there, Donald."

"Do'mp ou ucking call me 'Onalg!" Ressler howled around his wallet.

Red took a moment to digest that while Ressler got his sobbing breath under control.

Don't…Don't you…what? 'Don't you fucking call me Donald?' But why not? It's such a perfect name—especially for sneering and condescension. However, he decided, being condescending to a man who was completely helpless before one was bad taste and so he shrugged, very lightly in order not to move his tweezers, and kept his thoughts to himself.

"Alright?" he asked. "Can I continue? Keep still."

Ressler bit deeper into his wallet, hopefully not damaging his credit card, squeezed his eyes closed and kept as still as possible.

Reddington pushed gingerly forward, each millimetre convincing him more and more that this was futile and served no better purpose than to torture poor Ressler—but then the steel tips of the tweezers met something with resistance.

Got it. Now to get both the bullet and that piece of shirt it's torn off. If it wasn't a piece of cotton, or if he weren't able to take it out, Ressler was done for. Even now, his fever was spiking; Red could feel the heat burning his fingers and flaring up against his face like a furnace.

But Raymond Reddington wouldn't be Raymond Reddington if he didn't dot all the Is and tied every loose end; it took three minutes of painstakingly careful manoeuvring, probing, pulling and digging, but then the pincers closed just behind the bullet and dragged it out in one clean path.

"It's out," he told Ressler, who spat out his wallet, covered his face with his arms and proceeded to lie quivering, soaked in sweat, panting as if he'd run a marathon. "And I've extracted the culprit as well," he continued with profound satisfaction, as he noticed the small, slimy and bloody piece of fabric. Ressler didn't seem much interested in what had almost killed him—and could still kill him.

Quickly, Red wiped most of the blood off his belly, rinsed his hands in the now tepid boiled water and covered the gaping hole with a slightly moistened bandage. Briefly, he considered heating one of the knives in the blue flame of the stove to seal off the wound, but with those organs this close to the surface he decided the risk of damaging them by burning outweighed the benefit of cauterization. Instead, he finished bandaging the younger man, pulled down his undershirt, did up the buttons of his shirt and covered him with a blanket.

Ressler's head did not emerge from his arms. When Red gently pulled one away, he found closed, wet eyes in a slack face. Apart from those eyes, which were red, his face was completely devoid of colour. But his pulse, though fast, was steady enough.

"It would have been more comfortable for you if you'd lost consciousness during surgery, Donald."

"Fuck you," Ressler said in a very small voice and without opening his eyes.

Red laughed. "You're welcome."

And then his gaze shot down to the ground as the walkie talkie gave a hissing crackle.

Time passed slowly when one was both bored and forced to be alert. So far, no intelligible speech had issued from the radio, but it did produce sound, so Jorge and his men were at least a little bit closer than they had been before. Still, unless they decided to come by helicopter, Red wasn't too concerned they'd sneak up on him.

He did wonder about a helicopter. He and Ressler had been picked up by one, but he still thought it was more of a statement than a display of ownership. Besides, if Jorge had had a helicopter at his disposal, he would have used it by now. No, if he came by chopper, Jorge would have to arrange things, and he probably wouldn't be able to do so before dawn. Even if he had the slightest clue Red had made a beeline for the nearest X point, it would take more time for him to follow.

He checked his watch. 20:15 pm. It would take Dembe at least another three, maybe four hours to arrive, and perhaps more to find him here. Getting up, he sauntered over to the bed and pulled out the thermometer he'd tucked into Ressler's armpit. The man didn't react, too worn out to even acknowledge his presence. The fever had dropped a little, if only to 104.3 degrees; an hour ago it had almost been 105 and Reddington had, with some disappointment, concluded that he'd failed and the agent would die. Perhaps he would not. There was little he could do about it now, anyway.

He made another round through the little building. Sat down. Pulled gently at his sleeve and succeeded in separating it from the wound on his arm. Took some time to clean and bandage it. Made another round. All was quiet. Ressler muttered something in his sleep, tossed, turned, moaned and went quiet again.

The crickets sang to the moon.

There was nothing to do but wait.

6.

"Red!" Jorge shouted, advancing with open arms and enfolding Reddington in an embrace that might have been a bear hug if he hadn't been five foot seven and Reddington over six. Now, it was more like a koala bear hug. When he stepped back, Jorge shot Ressler a questioning look, followed by a short nod. The Reddington-associate look; Reddington was considered to be so safe, or so ruthless to people he didn't trust, everyone in his company was automatically accepted. Which was good, as Ressler was an exceptionally bad actor, at least when he had to speak. He could 'die' quite convincingly, and he could play the silent, grim henchman very well, but the moment he had to open his mouth, he tended to borrow from Shakespeare, Poe, and movies and spew forth overly dramatic platitudes instead of normal dialogue. It wasn't that he tried to be theatrical; it just came out that way. Too many books, movies and series while he was recuperating from several kinds of injuries in his youth, he guessed. Oremaybe he was just a hopeless geek.

It was one of the reasons he kept his distance from people (and his mouth closed) until he knew them better. Raimo and Jonica, from his former task force, had regarded him with wide-eyed perplexity the first time they'd had a small success in the Reddington case and had proceeded to get exceedingly drunk that evening. When Ressler drank, the hold he kept on his tongue slipped, and the more it slipped, the more verbose he became. After all, he had a lot of interests he felt deeply about; he just rarely shared his opinions.

"Holy crap, Don," Jonica had said after listening to an account of why one should absolutely visit the Grand Canyon at midnight so one could first see the milky way and then watch the sun come up, "and here I thought you were tough as bullets! Christ, but you're a fucking romantic! Fer God's sake, did you hear that, Sam? 'Like a storm of pearls in the deep black ocean'. Frickin' stars. You should send that to the local travel organization, Donnie, they love descriptions and shit like that."

Audrey, who had accompanied him on this trip to the Grand Canyon, had loved his metaphor, at least, she'd growled, 'Then take me under this storm of pearls, and be quick about it, Don!'

But most people reacted like Jonica, the first couple of times. Therefore, he was more than happy to keep quiet and just be there and watch. And so he simply shook Jorge's hand and nodded to the man's associates, and listened as he and Reddington exchanged familiarities. But then all around them, the ground started trembling, and thunder struck down from the sky—struck him, in his stomach—and then they were running, through the mines, through the mountains, while donkey heads fell out of the sky like gruesome bombs. For some reason, he found himself holding a mobile phone that emitted creaks and crackles, and Jorge's voice croaked through it, saying, "Give me back that gun, hombre, or I'll swear to god I'll activate my magnets and pull that bullet right out of your gut!"

"It's out already," he returned, waving the Heckler & Koch in triumph. "And this? This is mine! You've no right to it, it's Special Ops and it has no place in the hands of some lowlife Mexican thug!"

"You're wrong, there, my friend," the cell hissed. "I'm coming for it. And I'm coming for you. For the BOTH of you." And somehow, he'd managed to attach the butterfly fridge magnets to his back and take to the air.

"He's here!" Ressler sat up, ignoring the pain in his abdomen and blindly reaching for the pistol.

Reddington, sitting near the window, sat up straight. "Who's here?"

"Jorge. He's still following us. He's flying. Where's my gun?"

Reddington cast a glance out of the window. "Relax. He's not here yet, and he won't land here with a helicopter; it's too dangerous at night."

Ressler disregarded the inane notion the man would need a helicopter to fly. "Where's my gun?"

"Technically, it's not your gun. It either belonged to Gomez Cantor or his friend. But it's on the ground at your right side." He watched silently as Ressler felt around for the weapon, gasping with pain and barely suppressed panic. "Donald, he's not here yet. You're hallucinating."

"I saw him."

"Forgive me if I find that hard to believe as you've been fast asleep for the past two hours. Look, you have a very high fever and you probably should go back to sleep. I've been keeping guard and I can assure you that everything is calm and we're still relatively safe up here."

Ressler blinked in the moonlit darkness, which wasn't very dark at all. Perhaps he's right. I feel like crap, and it does seem rather strange for a man to be able to fly with the help of butterfly magnets. He felt terribly disorientated and pretty much terrible overall. Sleeping, however, he felt was impossible for the moment. He did lie down again, the pistol tucked against his thigh—Reddington glanced at it with what might be a frown, doubtlessly less than happy to see the hallucinating idiot cuddling a loaded gun to his leg, but Ressler felt more secure with it, and besides, Reddington should just deal with it. Or take it away from me like candy from a baby. It's not as if I'd be able to stop him. He bit his lip when he tried to find a slightly more comfortable position, but the fever made all his muscles ache and his belly was one big throbbing mess. God, this sucks. I haven't felt this bad in years. Even with my leg it was better. At least that was just pain. I need my thoughts to be straight. I need this blanket away from me. He tossed to away, then shivered in the draft of cooler air.

"What time is it? Shouldn't the cavalry have arrived by now?"

Reddington shook his head. "Not yet, not by another hour, maybe two, and perhaps more. They still need to reach us, and like I said, they can't pick us up by plane or helicopter, even if they did manage to find one on such short notice."

"You have a plane."

"Yes, and it's in San Antonio, and my pilot is at a wedding. It'll take a couple of hours for him to fly the plane here, even if Dembe was able to reach him. No, we'll be here for another couple of hours. Go back to sleep."

"No."

"Fine, then. How are you feeling? Better, I take it."

"I feel like…someone put a shovel in my gut and planted a tulip there."

Reddington's brow furrowed. "Actually, I was being serious. Sarcasm isn't exactly helpful at this moment. You might still die of the infection and I really need to know how you are doing."

"I wasn't being sarcastic," Ressler said truthfully. The tulip comparison seemed wholly adequate to him. He closed his eyes for a moment but opened them quickly as he felt the black, swirling fever dreams beckon. "You want to know how I feel? Pretty damn awful. Maybe it's a little less awful than before, but I can tell you it's no picnic."

"I'm sure it isn't." Again, the man sounded both amused and compassionate at the same time.

Ressler wondered how compassionate he really was. "Have you ever been shot? Apart from…just now, I mean?" He knew he had been, but who knew? Maybe the man would finally own up to something concrete.

Reddington smiled. "You know I have been. People in my…line of work rarely continue their life without being clipped once or twice. I have also been tortured, and have done my own share of shooting and torturing as well—although not much of the latter, not personally. It's an art, torture, and not one I particularly enjoy or excel at—as you should know as well. Why do you ask?"

"Curiosity. As in, I would like to know if you know what I'm going through. If you fully know how to appreciate it." Appreciate it's me. Instead of you.

"Ah, that way." He gave a small nod. "I do value your sacrifice, never think I don't. As for appreciation, to my immense gratitude, I've never been shot in the stomach, so I can't say I know what you're going through exactly, but I am familiar with debilitating agony, so…"

Ressler nodded. Briefly, he wondered what Anslo Garrick had done to Reddington, and how the other man had been able to escape. Then his attention refocused on his own body, and the way it was failing him now, and how disappointing that was to him. "I used to have this…this partner, who was hit in the gut, too. Smaller calibre, but still. He didn't feel a thing."

"Every wound is different, as is every man," Reddington said matter-of-factly. "The fact that your partner did not feel pain doesn't mean you shouldn't either, or that you're a lesser man for suffering the way you do. Frankly, I'm surprised you're still this lucid. Despite our differences, I do admire you for your tenacity if nothing else."

Ressler smiled bitterly. Why thank you, Raymond. I feel so much better knowing that you admire my ability to take pain.

He was quiet for a moment, but the silence felt oppressive and he desperately wanted to break it, if only so he wouldn't fall asleep again. "So you've…been tortured?"

"Yes."

"Did you hold out?"

"Yes. Most of the time," Reddington corrected himself. "Being tortured taught me some amazingly valuable truths about the human body and mind, knowledge I still apply regularly. How about you?"

"Only once. When I was…Before I was put on your case. A long time ago. We were dropped…somewhere. Met up with our contact. He was only a kid, maybe fifteen years old. That happens, sometimes, freedom fighters being that young. He was…so diligent. So devoted. We were taken not far away from…from where we needed to go. Behind enemy lines. We were all separated, and I was locked up in a small cell without food or daylight. They asked me what my mission was, roughed me up a couple of times. It wasn't so bad," he murmured, smiling blandly at the memory. "After all, I'd been trained to withstand those things. But then they brought in that kid…"

"Your contact?" Reddington asked.

Ressler nodded, swallowed. "Yeah. Him. Said that if I wouldn't answer their questions, they'd torture the kid. I'd been trained for that as well. So I said nothing. And they beat up the kid, and it was painful, but the kid kept screaming at me to keep silent, that he'd hold out, and so I kept quiet. Then they took him away, and asked me those questions again…and then the kid started screaming in the other room…you know? Those terribly high shrieks…and one of the men came back and showed me a little piece of bloody meat. Turned out they'd cut off the first digit of his index finger. They said they'd keep cutting off bits of him until I answered their questions."

"And you caved." There was no judgment in Red's voice, maybe even sympathy.

Ressler nodded. Even after all these years the memory made him feel physically ill. Or more ill than he already was. "I caved. It took sixteen of those pieces. He'd leave whenever I wouldn't answer, then come back with an additional fresh piece in his hand. Like a handful of bloody cheetos. I…I couln't handle it anymore when they started on his second hand. Told them everything." He grinned humourlessly. "And you know what? It was a test."

"A test?" He could hear real surprise in the older man's voice. "You were captured, tortured, made to witness child torture, and this was part of your training?"

"Uhuh. Kid was fine. His fingers? Fakes, with lamb's blood. Only the part with the nail'd been difficult to fake convincingly."

"Dear heavens," Red said slowly. "I wasn't aware Special Ops were quite that ruthless in their training."

Ressler turned his head to look him in the eye. "You know I used to be Special Ops."

"I had my suspicions. I know you made a rather abrupt career change seven years ago. After Brussels, I started looking into you and found almost nothing. That, more than anything, convinced me you must have been an SO veteran." He opened his mouth, then thought better, but Ressler could still hear what he'd been about to say: Thank you for confirming my suspicions. Instead, he said, thoughtfully, "It's the most effective form of torture, hurting another. Most people think it's easier to see someone else suffer than to bear pain. The opposite is true, of course: the moment you are the one made master over someone else's life, you feel responsible for it. You'd have to be made of very stern stuff indeed if you don't end someone else's pain if you have the opportunity to do so."

"Let me guess," Ressler whispered. "You're specialized in that kind of coercion."

"I wouldn't have used a child."

They were silent for a while. Ressler stared up at the ceiling. The patterns in the wood warped in front of his eyes as the fever beat in his temples.

"What happened after you failed their test?" Reddington asked. "If you don't mind me asking, of course."

Ressler snorted. "I decided never to fail again. Unfortunately, my next assignment was you."

"Were you recruited by the FBI, or did you apply for Cooper's little task force?"

"That's none of your business."

Reddington laughed quietly. "No, I guess it isn't." He got up from his chair, walked to the window on the other side.

Ressler followed him with his eyes before pressing the cool gun barrel against his burning forehead. This may not be the best way to cool your face, asshole. Reluctantly, he pulled the thing away again. Heckler & Kochs didn't have a safety, and while he'd have to be exceptionally unlucky to pull the trigger unintentionally, it would be pretty stupid to accidentally shoot himself in the head.

"Have you found out why Jorge betrayed you yet?"

He saw Reddington shrug. "No. I haven't found more information since we arrived here, so, no."

"Maybe it has to do with this gun."

"I don't see how it could. Why would you think so?"

"Because this is a Heckler & Koch. Mark 23."

"Yes?"

"It's not a very common weapon to find on a Mexican thug."

Another shrug. "You find all kinds of weapons, everywhere."

Ressler frowned, wishing he could think more clearly. "It's the standard weapon used by my old command," he said, and immediately he felt the weight of the other man's gaze upon him.

"Special Ops? This is their standard issue weapon?"

"Yeah. Been that way for a while. You didn't know?"

"I wasn't aware. That's a different thing." He turned away from the window, leaning his chin on his hand. "So one of Jorge's men has a pistol that is, indeed, rather uncommon for this little part of the world, and which is standard issue to American Special Operations Command. Of course, it's used widely by other factions as well."

"Do you know any Specials or ex-Specials who want you dead?"

"Apart from you?" Reddington grinned. "A couple. And it doesn't need to be them, necessarily. But if…" He halted; the radio had emitted a single sentence of scratchy but intelligible speech. "Right," he continued brightly. "You should have taken the opportunity to sleep when I offered it to you. Let's get you installed near this window, shall we?"

"I don't think they're here yet, or even close."

"Perhaps not. However," he dragged in a second chair from the other room, "I'd rather not be surprised by them. Wait," he added, when Ressler tried to push himself up and doubled over in pain, "let me help you. First, get up. That's it, lean on me, nice and slowly…Now, sit down in this chair. There you go. Alright? Just checking you're still with me. Are you? No need to look so angry, I just don't want you to faint on me. I'll move the mattresses, so you can sit on top of them; you'll be able keep that up for much longer than sitting on a chair." After lowering Ressler into the chair, he proceeded to do just that, pulling the entire pile of mattresses to the window. Then he collected the chair he'd been using himself, placed it against the wall and leaned one of the mattresses against it, creating a sort of back piece Ressler could lean against.

"There," he panted, stretching his back and rolling his shoulders, "All set. Do you think you can sit there and keep an eye out for our charming Mexican hosts?"

"Sure." Ressler rubbed his forehead with a quivering hand. He was appalled by his own weakness. Must be the fever. I climbed most of the day with a frickin' bullet in my gut. Wasn't the height of fun, but it was ok. Now, I can hardly get up on my own. It was especially galling he now needed Reddington's help to get out of the stupid chair and back onto the mattresses—as if he weren't dependent enough already. Once he lay back, he was as worn out as he'd been after their trek here, and it was all he could do not to let his head loll back and pass out again. This is not going to work. I need more lorcet, and I need something to bring this fever down. He's right, I won't keep this up for long—but I must! Can't give up now. Dembe and Lizzie'll be here soon, just get through this, just a few hours more…

He started as Red placed his hand on his forehead again. It was a strange gesture, almost tender, and it involved brushing his ruined bangs away from his face. "What are you doing?" he asked sharply.

"Checking your temperature," the other man said with perfect casualness.

"It hasn't gone down."

"No, it hasn't." He squatted down next to Ressler, on the ground, arms resting on his thighs and hands dangling between his knees. "And that's worrying. If it doesn't…"

"Stop," Ressler interrupted him. "We don't need hypotheses. I'll do what I can to fend any approaching hostiles off, fever or no fever. If I die, so be it; if I do, know then that I did the best I could to protect you."

Red raised his eyebrows. "My friend, I applaud your zeal, but you cannot expect to be up to your usual excellence with a temperature of 104, and that means you're not an asset but a liability to me. I simply can't trust you'll hold up—to no fault of your own, of course, but …"

"I won't fail," Ressler said stubbornly. Vaguely, he was aware he might be strolling into theatrical territory again, but this was not the time to mince words. Strangely enough, Reddington seemed to appreciate what he was saying. He gave Ressler a quick pat on the shoulder.

"Very well, then. I'll trust your self-confidence. Don't disappoint me."

"I'm not your flunky, Reddington."

"Don't disappoint Cooper, then," Reddington replied flippantly. "He'd be severely displeased if you got me killed by dying on me at an inopportune moment."

Ressler snorted weakly. If you were to die by accident, 'my friend', Cooper would bring out the Bollinger and celebrate in the Banana bar. "Do we have any more water?"

"Yes. I'll give you a bottle. Drink sparingly, though; you should probably keep your water intake to a minimum with that wound of yours."

Ressler wanted to protest that earlier that day, Reddington had given him all the water he wanted, but it occurred to him that keeping him hydrated during a long walk in the scorching sun may have been more important than making sure he wasn't leaking any water into his abdominal cavity. Still, he figured, as he took a long but shallow sip, this fever would burn away most of the fluid. If anything, he didn't want to die thirsty.

Elizabeth Keen decided she didn't like Dembe very much. Reddington may trust him with his life and claim that he was absolutely loyal—fine. That didn't mean she had to think him good company. The man was so quiet! Why was she surrounded by men who never opened their mouths to express their feelings?

The fact that she was a profiler and that profilers usually built profiles without having the opportunity to have long and intimate chats with their subjects, didn't mean she disliked having conversations. She had a problem with people who didn't talk to her—which was the same reason why she and Ressler had never really become the dynamic duo she'd at first hoped they could become. It wasn't that he wasn't a decent kind of guy, but she liked a little openness, a little clarity, preferably communicated in multiple-syllabic sentences. Like Tom. Tom wouldn't have her trudging through the mountains with a heavy backpack without telling her exactly what they were doing, where they were going, what they could reasonably expect, and how long it would take them to get there.

Then again, Tom was safely at home, perhaps preparing his classes for tomorrow, or reading in bed.

Ha! Tom called her closemouthed! He should spend four and a half hours with Dembe in a car, then he'd know what closemouthed meant. It was like talking to a piece of furniture.

"So what's happened?" she had asked. "What's happened to them? Where are they?"

And Dembe had just looked at her, and said, "I just told you."

And he had, but really, what was she to do with that? "Raymond and your partner are in trouble. I believe Agent Ressler has been shot. We need to get to these coordinates and pick them up." Seriously. Seriously? She was supposed to accept that little information? Was Red alright? How badly was Ressler doing? What'd gone wrong? Why? Were they in danger? Why couldn't they call back?

She was used to people acting as a sounding board, so she could test the logic of her ideas, but Dembe absorbed all sound, just regarding at her with the same long-suffering eyes as the neighbour's dog when it was beset with toddlers pulling at its ears: why are you bothering me? Can't you see I'm not enjoying this?

Problem was, she thought, that Dembe wished she were elsewhere, so he could organize this little rescue mission all by himself. It wasn't that he hated her; he just thought she was useless. At the same time, he knew she would not acquiesce to stay behind—it was quite considerate of him to include her in his plans at all, really. So after her first, failed, attempt to get more information out of him—'we're losing valuable time, Ms Keen'—she figured out the best she could do was obey his wishes and make herself unobtrusive and, if possible, useful.

She'd hoped he'd tell her more once she had run his errands, bought food and water and supplements, and found shoes better suited to walking. But he never did! He did not respond to theories and volunteered none of his own, saying, "We will see when we meet up with Raymond." When he spoke at all, it was into his mobile phone, to a man called Victor. And then he only shrugged when she asked who Victor was. The only thing he said to her without prompting was, "Why don't you get some sleep? Chances are we'll be up and about all night." And because she was exhausted from trying to find out what was going on, she'd actually taken him on his word and slept for three hours.

And now the car was well out of sight, parked off-road in a shallow ditch, several miles back. She was not sure Dembe intended to return to it or get it back at all; he'd taken everything not bolted down or belonging to the car itself, put in into two packs, handed her the lightest and wordlessly hoisted the bigger on onto his own back. She didn't know what was in them apart from what she'd bought herself.

He had given her an arm-mounted flashlight, cautioning her at the same time not to use it unless she absolutely had to. "The moon provides enough light, and the flashlight will draw attention to us."

"I know," she'd remarked irritably. "I've seen 'Skyfall'."

To her surprise, he'd shot her a wide smile at that, a flash of white in the dark planes of his face. "Then you know what I'm talking about. Good. Let's go."

So they went. Dembe frequently checked his watch while they were walking, keeping track on a map he'd somehow acquired as well. He was right about the moon; it was very bright, although all colours were muted and shadows seemed to be bottomless holes in the fabric of the world.

For quite a long time, all Lizzie heard was her own breath, the crunch of their shoes on the pebbly ground, and the sloshing sound of the water bottles in her backpack. Sometimes, crickets would chime up, filling the air with their buzzing chant. At times, she desperately wanted to talk to Dembe, but every time she controlled herself. If he didn't want to talk, fine; she would show she wasn't some chatty female, suited only for distraction and noise. If he could be silent and poised, so could she. It wasn't easy, though.

What, she kept asking herself, am I going to do if something happens to him? I have no clue where we're going. What were those coordinates again? So that watch he's looking at, that's a compass. If he gets shot, I'll just grab it and continue on. But what if he falls into a crag and takes it with him? I'd never find Reddington and Ressler back.

With this problem in mind, she jogged up to his position. So far, she had easily been able to keep up with him—that, at least, made her feel a little proud. She may be young and inexperienced, but she was very fit, and she could keep up with the best of them.

Was he? The best? He was Reddington's confidant and henchman, nothing more. Why was it that, after the first few days, she'd never felt inadequate at the Post office, but continuously second-guessed herself in the company of this former sex slave?

"Dembe?" she kept her voice low. "Dembe. You need to tell me where we're going in case something happens to you."

"I told you." He gave her the coordinates again, and this time she made sure to memorize them.

"Ok. How far along are we?"

"Close."

She rolled her eyes. "How close? One mile? Two?"

He opened his mouth, but suddenly snapped it shut and held up his hand in a silencing way as she opened her mouth, in turn, to ask what was wrong. He needn't have; because she heard the noise the same moment he did.

It tore the peaceful night apart like an explosion.

A gun shot.

"Very close," she concluded, and drew her weapon. Finally, she thought. Answers.

7.

Dembe and Lizzie hurried up the slope, pistols at the ready, keeping close to the ground. As they approached the crest of the hillock, they dropped to their stomachs so their silhouettes wouldn't present a clear target against the sky.

"There," Dembe pointed.

Lizzie followed his finger and could make out a small black square; a small, black, square building, down in the valley below. As she was looking, a flash of light pierced the darkness, immediately followed by a cracking shot.

"They…" she began, but fell quiet when the light of a responding shot from the building reflected from the window.

"They're inside," Dembe finished her thought. "Yes. We found them."

"And they're returning fire, so they're both armed and alive."

"One of them is, at least," Dembe said flatly.

Another shot sounded, but this one issued from the other side of the house.

"No, there's two of them still," Lizzie said.

"Or there are more attackers."

"In any case, they're badly outnumbered. Let's go make a difference." Without waiting for Dembe, she slithered over the ridge, coming to a crouch once she had descended far enough, and started to make her way down. Rolling pebbles behind her indicated that Dembe was following her lead.

As she carefully snuck down, keeping to the shadows as much as possible, Lizzie tried to assess the situation. She was sure the men in the little building numbered two: not even if he ran from one side to the other would one man be able to fire that quickly.

So Ressler's alive and able to handle a gun. She was very much relieved to have that clear, much more so than she thought she'd be. She and Ressler may not exactly form a dream team, and she may not harbour any feelings of warm friendship for him, but still, he was her partner, he wasn't a total dick most of the time, and she'd missed him when he'd been recuperating from being shot the previous time. Besides…she thought he was rather adorably besotted with that girlfriend of his, Audrey. Ever since she turned up at his hospital bed, he'd definitely mellowed out and smiled more often. Guess she'll have to start visiting him again, if Dembe's right. Man's got the worst luck in the universe if he got shot again this soon.

So, two beset friendlies in the building. It took her a little longer to count the hostiles, spread out and hunkered down as they were on the shadowy grounds surrounding the building, but after a couple of minutes, she decided there must be about ten. One of them had a machine pistol, an uzi, perhaps. Its rattling fire could be distinguished every couple of minutes, from different directions. One or two hostiles used a shotgun (Ka-BLAM!), the rest had ordinary pistols. They were all solely focused on the building. Lizzie and Dembe could have marched down into the valley waving the American flag and they wouldn't have paid them any attention.

Well, that's good, isn't it? A bit of luck for once. The shots masked her not exactly silent descent; the ground was uneven, covered in loose pebbles, and despite the moonlight she stumbled once in a while. The valley was quite small, built pretty much like a cup, with one slope steeper than the other one. She and Dembe were coming down the moderate side. A sparse growth of stunted trees and brush made it look hospitable compared to the rest of the bare mountainside. Lizzie gratefully made use of the shrubs, ducking behind them as she made her way down. Every once in a while she could see movement from the corner of her eye: Dembe, picking his way down a little to the left of her.

Once, the gunfire halted temporarily as one of the attackers was shot by one of the men in the house, and one of his colleagues left his cover to collect him.

Lizzie neatly filed it away in her mind for later consideration: they risk their own lives to save their mates. Friends?

Another twenty yards and she'd be close enough to start picking them off with any confidence—she winced as Dembe, about fifteen yards to her left, chose that moment to fire his first shot. One of the hostiles went down with a scream, grabbing at his shoulder. Of course Reddington's man would be a better shot than she. Gritting her teeth, Lizzie repressed the urge to shoot as well, ran to the nearest gorse bush and threw herself flat on the ground.

The men, as of yet unaware they were being flanked, kept firing at the building. The men in the building kept firing back, but sparingly, rarely shooting more than twice in a row. Low on ammo. As she was watching, one of the people inside managed to wing another thug. Dembe hit another one, and now they discovered they were being hit from two sides at once.

Several of them dove behind bushes, rocks and other outcroppings, others simply dropped down and disappeared in the shadows. The gunfire halted while everyone waited for everyone else to make their first move.

Lizzie cursed. She had picked her target and could see him crouched behind a tree, presenting his side to her while he scanning the surroundings. He was still a little too far away for comfort, but it was time to take a stand. No-one seemed to have detected her yet; she had more than enough time to aim carefully and precisely and hit her target neatly in the back; he fell over without a sound. Part of her revolted at this—this murder—but she had no doubts the man in question would have killed her without batting an eye. She ducked down as a bullet tore through the brittle bush, only a few inches above her head, raining twigs and severed leaves onto her shoulders.

Someone spotted me. She rolled over, away from the gorse, pressed her body close to the ground as she tigered away to a small tree a bit to her right. She was painfully conscious of the fact that she wasn't wearing any body armour. I wonder if it would help if I were to stand up and yell, "FBI! Throw down you weapons and stand down!" Somehow, she didn't think that would work. Besides, she had no jurisdiction here—the FBI was notoriously unwilling to intervene in foreign affairs, even if it concerned a small dozen of Mexian criminals. Which doesn't mean that Cooper won't be pissed if anything happens to Reddington, she thought, peering around the prickly stem—you couldn't really call it a trunk—of the tree. The bush she'd been lying behind was savaged by another bullet. The man had not seen her move. Stabilizing her right hand with her left, she focused on the boulder he'd taken shelter behind, and the next time she saw his head, she pulled the trigger. He was a bit too far away to her liking, and she hit the boulder instead of his face, but he cried out in pain anyway, covered his eyes with his hands and dropped out of sight.

Splinter? Splinter.

For several minutes she tried to find another target, but from her position it proved almost impossible to get a clear shot. The guy with the uzi rattled away on the other side of the house, and she shivered at the thought of what such a rain of bullets could do to a sturdy yet unprotected little house.

She crept around, diving from cover to cover, shooting and missing; being shot at and being missed, for more than a minute. Then, just as she considered making a run for the house itself, four of the attackers attempted a rush, with two of them providing covering fire and the other three running for the building, but Lizzie picked one off from a new position, a little closer to the house, Dembe (she thought) brought one down from the other direction, and either Red or Ressler shot both the remaining charger and one of the men covering them. After that, shots were exchanged sporadically and the situation more or less ground to a halt. So long as they didn't break cover, the men inside the house could not shoot the attackers, and while they might fire at the building, the attackers—apart from the man with the uzi—posed preciously little real threat to those inside. Additionally, at least five of them were either wounded or dead now, and they obviously valued their own lives over those of their targets. Leave, however, they did not, and once in a while they would shoot at the building, destroying the windows and punching holes into the thinner parts of the walls.

Lizzie decided to act on her earlier plan. She crouched behind her rock, then, using a cloud drifting in front of the moon, quickly ran closer to the house in the temporary gloom, and more specifically to the side of the window that continually held the gleam of a handheld weapon resting on the sill. This part of the house was now relatively quiet, as the hostiles had decided to try and approach the other three sides of the house, that, she had determined, were defended by one man alone.

As she moved, Lizzie could see the gleam flicker as the gun was cocked, and called out quietly, "Don't shoot! it's me, it's Keen, don't shoot!" In preparation of not being heard, she dropped to the ground again, but instead of a shot she heard a harshly whispered reply: "Keen? What the hell are you doing here?"

Well, you guys called for us, so I guess I'm here to save your ass. What else?

"Ressler?"

"No, your aunt Fanny. Of course it's me. Get in here before you get shot!"

She shook her head. "No. I need to use the cover of the building to get a shot at that uzi over there. Won't hit him from inside, but at this angle I just might. I only wanted to make sure you wouldn't shoot me."

Ressler didn't reply, so she scuttled over to the house and pressed herself against the wall, just before the corner. "Cover me." Without waiting for his reply, she gingerly peeped around the corner. The uzi guy conveniently chose that moment to shoot another quick burst, neatly pointing out his own location.

Close. Unpleasantly, dangerously close. But he hadn't seen her yet, and so she closed her eyes, took a deep breath, readied her gun and, twisting her upper body around the corner, took careful aim.

Aim. Breathe out. Pull the trigger. Yes! Pull back into cover.

The uzi fire went wild, then stopped abruptly. On trembling legs, Lizzie made for the window.

"I think I hit him. Let me in."

"Careful," Ressler said, as she hastily climbed into the shattered window. He had punched away most of the jagged shards of glass still in the frame, but she nicked her pinkie. "I can't…really move out of the way."

Somehow, she managed to slither inside without landing on his legs, and once inside she noticed he was half sitting, half lying on a pile of mattresses. The arm holding the pistol was propped up on the sill, so he didn't have to hold it up by himself. The second thing she noticed was that his shirt and the upper part of his pants were dark with what she assumed was dried blood, and that his face was disturbingly gaunt in the unflattering light. Perspiration glittered on his forehead.

She squatted down next to him. "You look like hell. Is that your blood?"

"Yeah." He didn't look at her, kept his gaze on the moonlit valley. "'Fraid so."

"Where?"

"Stomach."

Her own stomach clenched in sympathy and sudden fear. Abdominal wounds were risky, and Ressler looked bad.

He may be a stuck-up asshole at times, but I don't think I want another partner yet, she thought anxiously.

"Dembe's brought antibiotics. And painkillers."

"That's great." His voice was flat and low, even more so than usual.

On impulse, she reached out and put her hand on his forehead. "Jesus. You're…"

"Why don't you go and do something useful, instead of mother-henning me?" Ressler snapped. "Go and help Reddington. They're still shooting out there."

Hurt, she pulled back her hand, but he didn't even meet her eyes. All she could see of his face was his jaw, the muscles twitching. "Alright. Hang on in there."

He didn't deign that with a reply. Lizzie checked her ammo and went to join Reddington in the other room.

He looked around from where he was crouching next to a window, smiling as he always did when he saw her. "Lizzie! What a pleasant surprise to see you here. Stay low, there's a good girl."

She squatted down next to him. "Dembe's out there as well, somewhere. I lost sight of him when I moved to the house."

"I know. I know where he is." He pressed closer to the wall as a bullet nicked the window, spraying a rain of tiny glass splinters inside. Lizzie started as she noticed that half of his face was covered in blood, but immediately realized that though the blood may be copious, the wounds were no more than nicks, caused by exactly such a shot. His arm, however…

"You're wounded."

"Nothing more than a scratch, my dear," he said cheerfully. It was truly remarkable, she reflected, how nothing seemed to be able to faze this man. Failed plans, being shot at, life-threatening situations, Reddington remained unflappable and irrepressible. "Are you carrying the penicillin?"

"I don't think so."

"You don't think so."

"Dembe wasn't very…forthcoming."

Red snorted. "I see. Well, better get him to join us, then." Intently, he peered out of the window. "Cover that window to your left, will you? They're keeping relatively quiet at the moment, but I wouldn't want them to think we're inviting them in." He waited until she'd taken her place at the window, turned and fired three rapid shots out of his own. Immediately, he retreated further inside, clear of the window, and two seconds later Dembe's large form barrelled through the frame.

"And there you are! We're complete once more." Grinning, Red helped his bodyguard to his feet before they both dropped back onto their haunches.

"You're bleeding," Dembe said accusingly.

Reddington shrugged. "It's just glass cuts. I was negligent and failed to remove the splinters from the window before turning my face right into them."

Lizzie winced. Dembe was not impressed. He was as gentle as a soul as had ever been born, but he never failed to point out to his friend that said friend was behaving irresponsibly.

"Did the window shoot you in the arm as well?"

"No, that was Gomez Cantar. Or his associate, I don't know. We wrecked his car in retaliation. Oh, and killed him. It's fine for the moment. Did you bring antibiotics?"

In reply, Dembe shrugged off his backpack and liberated two pill bottles. "Here."

"Pills?" Red asked dubiously, shaking one of the bottles.

"I wasn't sure I'd be able to get a syringe and liquid doses here in one piece."

"Fair enough."

"Callaghan told me to give him one pill every six hours for 48 hours, then one every day. One vicodin every 4 hours, unless the patient is asleep or otherwise comfortable."

"I plan to be out of here before the night is over, but thank you." He nodded at the window he'd vacated. "I'd be much obliged. Also, I am out of bullets."

Dembe nodded and Reddington crept back to the room Ressler was in.

He was still conscious, which was pretty remarkable of its own, but he did not hear Red approach and started violently when he patted him on the shoulder.

"Haa! Aah, crap, ow…Fuck, what are you doing here?"

Reddington ignored the question, took in the dilated eyes, fast, shallow breathing and sallow, damp skin. "How are things here?"

"Quiet. I'm almost out." He leaned back against the mattress, wiped his face with his left hand. "Of bullets, I mean. Almost out. One of them left in a helicopter, but I think I shot it down. What's that?"

Red shook a pill out of each bottle. "Penicillin. And painkillers."

Ressler frowned. "Where did you get those?"

"Dembe brought them. Open up."

"Dembe? When did…?"

Red pressed the pill against his lips. "Open. You have the most beautifully straight and even teeth I've ever seen in a man's mouth—did you wear braces as a child? Swallow. Where's that bottle? Here. And this one as well. There you go." He sat down on the edge of the mattress, studying the younger man as Ressler vainly tried to lift his gunhand back onto the sill. Finally, he simply plucked the pistol out of his hand. "Leave it. They're quiet for the time being. Conserve your strength, you'll need it later."

"But the helicopter…"

"I'll take care of any helicopters," Red said smoothly. "Rest for a while. I'll keep watch."

Ressler managed a faint nod before his eyes fluttered closed.

Red had been staring out of the window, into the deceptively peaceful night, for a couple of minutes when Dembe joined him.

"Raymond."

"Yes, my friend?"

"What are we going to do? We can't stay here."

"I know."

"There aren't that many left. We can shoot our way out, then make our way to the retrieval point."

"Yes."

Dembe looked down on the man on the mattresses; asleep, but moving restlessly, occasionally muttering something incomprehensible. "He's very sick."

"Yes."

Dembe squatted a little closer. "We may have to leave him," he said softly. "He'll slow us down…"

"No." Red's voice brooked no argument. "That's not an option at the moment."

Dembe inclined his head. He had only stated the obvious, and if Raymond did not wish things to happen that way, then they wouldn't. Dembe wouldn't waste time trying to convince him; he had vast faith in and respect for his friend and employer, and instead of protesting, he thought of ways to enable them to take the injured agent with them.

"Can he walk?"

"I sincerely doubt it."

"But you brought him here. Did you carry him?"

Red laughed. "Dembe, you're such a flatterer!" He sobered again. "No, he was able to walk most of the day, but then he wasn't running such a high fever. And I had to take the bullet out; that took a lot more out of him than simply a piece of lead and a shred of fabric. Even if he can walk, it won't be for long. He's lost too much blood and he's weakened too much."

"So we'll need to carry him. If I…" He halted as Reddington shushed him.

The walky talky on the ground spat forth a couple of bleeps and then a very clear conversation in Spanish.

"Come in. Diaz? Diaz, come in."

"This is Diaz. Did you capture them?"

"Negative. They've got company. Emilio, Luz and Paco are dead—"

"What?!"

"…and we have three wounded."

"Did you shoot Reddington?"

"We're not sure."

"You said company? What in the name of the devil do you mean?"

"Reinforcements. At least two have joined them in the house."

"Qué cabrones! What about Flavio, heh? He got 3000 bullets, did he eat them or something?"

"Flavio's down, too."

A stricken silence. Then: "Reddington needs to die. If you can't draw him out, blow him up. You did bring dynamite, didn't you?"

"Yes, but…the house…"

"Me suda la polla! If he survives, we're all dead! So get to it! Diaz out."

The walky talky bleeped and fell silent.

"Time to go!" Reddington said brightly.

8.

As one, they gazed at Ressler.

"I can carry him," Dembe said. "It will be slow and cumbersome, but for a short while, I'll be able to carry him and even run, if needs be."

Red gripped his shoulder in appreciation. "I don't doubt it. But you'd have to do a fireman's carry, and I don't think that'll improve his chances of survival."

Dembe glanced at Ressler's bloody shirt. "No, it probably won't."

"Maybe we won't need to. Donald!" Red shook Ressler by the shoulder, instantly waking him from his uneasy slumber.

"What?" he asked confusedly. "Did they find us?"

In the other room, Lizzie's gun fired one sharp bark.

"Yes," Reddington answered. "We have to move now. Let's see if you can get up."

"Vicodin kicks in fast," the other man muttered, but nevertheless he groaned in pain as Dembe and Red pulled him to his feet.

"Good. Can you stand on your own? Not so close to the window!" Ressler listed to the right, and Dembe grabbed his arm to stabilize them. The agent swayed on his legs like a newly born foal…but for the moment he remained upright, or rather, somewhat hunched over, with his arms protectively wrapped around his waist. "Do you think you can walk?"

"Absolutely," Ressler said faintly.

"No," said Dembe firmly. "I might demonstrate, but this is not the time; if I let go of him, he'll fold like a house of cards."

"Do houses of cards fold? I thought that was a bad hand," Ressler mumbled.

Another shot made him look sharply to the other room, and he tottered again. Dembe tightened the grip on his bicep.

"Hey guys?" Lizzie called softly. "I don't know what you're doing over there, but they're definitely up to something. I can see them—it seems they're splitting up. So far I've been able to keep them at a distance, but I think they're planning something."

"Yes," Red said with a sigh. "They're planning to blow up this house."

"What? How do you know that?"

"We retrieved one of their radios and they apparently were too stupid to notice." He turned to Dembe again. "You came down that way, didn't you? Am I correct to assume that it's easier to ascend than that side?" He thumbed at the slope he and Ressler had descended.

The Sudanese nodded. After a short hesitation, he deposited Ressler into a chair, plucked his tablet out of his backpack and opened the map program. "Here's where we are now. And here," he tapped the map about an inch and a half from their location, "is where Victor will pick us up in…" he checked his watch, "about fifty, maybe seventy minutes, if all goes well."

"That's…how far? About two miles?"

"Something like that. It's another valley. It should be long enough to land and depart again. But it's a little more than two miles…" He zoomed in. "We'd need to cross this ridge and go down into the valley below."

"More like five miles, then."

"Four, I'd say. Still, it'll take us a while, especially with him."

Ressler shot him a baleful glance. "Him is right here and perfectly capable of taking care of himself."

"No, you're not," Lizzie spoke up from the other room, where she was still keeping Jorge's men pinned down. "You can barely stand. Can't we make some sort of stretcher from a couple of those blankets? That way we could carry you quickly and still have one person left to cover our backs."

Red smiled. "Brilliant," he chuckled. "Let's get to it."

Dembe took two blankets and cut four narrow slits a couple of inches from the points. When he then wrapped the four handholds of both blankets around one another, they formed easy grips and kept one another from tearing. He had brought a knotted coil of dynamic rope, and for the man going first he threaded a length of it through the handholds, so that the stretcher could hang from the shoulders instead of the hands. The whole of it took about three minutes to make, and when Ressler reclined on top of it, which he did with a sulky, distasteful expression on his face, they found two persons could easily carry him that way.

While he was working on the stretcher, he and Red discussed which way they should go. The slope Dembe and Lizzie had taken was easier accessible than the one Red and Ressler had descended from, but would take them in the wrong direction initially. On the other hand, the sheerness of the other rise might cause difficulties with the stretcher and render all of them extremely vulnerable to hostile fire.

"All of which is inconsequential as long as someone is covering your backs," Lizzie said.

"True," Dembe said. "Which is why I should do that, while you, Raymond and Ressler climb up. I'm a better shot in the dark than you," he added, as she started to protest.

Reddington smiled at her. "He is," he said apologetically. "He's better than me, too." He joined Lizzie at the window and squinted into the night. "Where are they? Point them out to me."

She used her pistol to point. "Two are over there, see, behind that stone outcrop. And there's two more over there. A third, I think with two wounded, is behind that tree over there. He's the one trying to move…see, there he goes again!" She sent a bullet in his direction, and he hastily ducked back into cover.

"That's all of them?"

"Those are the ones that move."

"Still, all more or less on one side."

"Yes, they've trapped themselves here."

"Alright. We'll leave the house on the other side, and keep it between us and the bandits. With a bit of luck, they'll think we're out of bullets once we stop shooting, and waste their time blowing up the cabin before they notice we've left." He called Dembe and showed him where the bandits were holed up. "Keep them busy for…ten minutes, then come after us. That should give us enough time to get a solid head start. If necessary, I can cover you."

Dembe nodded. "Go safely, my brother. I will keep them off your back."

Red clasped his shoulder. "Don't take unnecessary risks. I will see you on the other side of the rise."

He briskly strode to the room Ressler was in and picked up the makeshift stretcher. "I'll take the front, if you don't mind, Lizzie. First, let's go outside."

They left the little building through the window. Ressler stubbornly wrung himself through the narrow window and stood leaning against the wall until Lizzie and Reddington had taken up the stretcher.

"Right, do you have a firm grip?" Red asked in a whisper, and at her nod, "Now, Donald, stop pouting and have a seat. You're too weak to do this on your own and we don't have the time to argue."

He had, Lizzie thought with a hidden smile, a very specific way of pronouncing Ressler's first name, as if it were a synonym for 'retard'.

Scowling, Ressler lowered himself into the hammock-like construction. He was a bit too tall and his feet stuck out, but he pulled his legs up when he noticed he was kicking Lizzie in the stomach.

"Comfy?" she whispered jokingly. His frown deepened. Ressler didn't enjoy needing people's help. Amazing how much like himself he was, with such a high fever. At least, she thought, he's well enough to be annoyed.

They set off at a steady pace, and Lizzie was happy to find that she could easily carry her share of Ressler's weight. Reddington kept going in a straight line, which might not be the best way up the slope, but would keep them hidden by the house longest. At first, the ground was relatively flat, but soon they came to the slope, and footing became a little more unsure. More clouds had filled the sky, and while the darkness covered their retreat, the lack of light made it difficult to detect uneven stones or loose pebbles. Nevertheless, they made good progress.

After a few minutes, three shots from the house made them freeze and gaze back, but after a second Red simply said, "Come on," and they continued on their way. As they reached the point of becoming visible above the cabin, Lizzie's breath came faster. Her back prickled with the fear of being shot at. When Dembe fired another shot, she started so badly she stumbled and almost fell.

"Hey!" Ressler hissed, "keep it straight!"

Shut up or walk! she wanted to snap, but his eyes were wide and round with fear, and she realized that this all must be twice as scary for him, helplessly bundled up in his little hammock while the two of them jostled him up the mountain. So she just gritted her teeth, grabbed hold of the handholds of the stretcher more tightly and kept quiet.

It took them longer to climb the slope than she had expected. The night was cool, but her shirt clung to her back and her hair stuck to her sweaty forehead. Ressler, light at first, became a heavier and heavier burden. In front of her Reddington slid on pebbles, cursed softly, struggled to keep his balance. He couldn't, and Ressler yelped as the stretcher and his butt inside of it swung against a rock.

"Ok, that's it," Ressler said, gripping the edges of the blankets with white-knuckled hands. "Let me out, I'll—"

KA-BOOM!

In reaction, Lizzie threw herself over Ressler to shield him—and butted heads with Reddington, who'd done the same thing.

"Ow!" she cried, grabbing for her head and blinking away tears—Christ, but the man had a hard head!

"Aaahh…Get off me. Get off me!" Ressler gasped, weakly trying to push her away, and she realized she was leaning most of her weight on his chest and lower body.

"Oh! I'm so sorry!"

"Get up, get up," Reddington hissed urgently, and pulled her to her feet as if she were a toddler. He even rubbed her head where they'd banged against one another. He wiped his bleeding lower lip where he'd skewered it on his own teeth against Lizzie's skull. "That was the house, we knew they were going to do that."

"Dembe!"

"He'll be fine, he can take care of himself. Get those blankets."

"I'll walk!" Ressler choked out.

"Shut up!" Both Reddington and Lizzie snarled. They hoisted the stretcher, heaved Ressler back into the centre and hastily scrambled up the path. The fire from the house lit the mountain, making it that much easier to climb, but exposing them as well. However, no additional gunfire could be heard, and only a few minutes later they made it over the crest. Without further ado, Red dumped Ressler a few yards from the ridge, dropped belly-down on the ground and anxiously searched the slope they'd just climbed for any sign of his driver.

Lizzie, with a backward glance at Ressler, who'd curled up on his blankets and didn't seem inclined to chat, crawled over to join him.

"Can you see him?"

"Not yet…" He coughed softly.

The smoke of the exploded cabin wafted their way, stinging in their eyes and making it difficult to make anything out. Then, "There!" Lizzie pointed. "Over there. He's just passing that tree stump over there," And much faster than I'd think humanly possible. What does this man do to work out, climb glaciers? "can you see him?"

Red peered intently, then suddenly nodded and relaxed. "Yes. I see him. Can you see any other movement below?"

She focused on the valley below. It was hard to see through the smoke, but she thought she could see a few figures approach the house. Too far away to hit, though, she thought. For her, at least.

"If possible, I don't want to let them know we've survived the explosion," Reddington said. He gingerly touched his lip. "You've got a hard head, Lizzie."

"I could say the same thing to you. They still haven't noticed him."

"It's hard for them to see through the smoke. Let's hope they all think we've been blown to pieces."

Another ten minutes later, Dembe joined them, coughing, eyes red with smoke, but smiling broadly. "We have all been killed," he said as he slid over the ridge and crawled over to the others. "It was a great tragedy. Thank you," he added, when Lizzie handed him a bottle of water. He took a sip, spat it out, then drank some more. "I don't think anyone saw me."

"Nevertheless we should move quickly," Reddington said. He checked his watch. "We don't want to miss our plane now, do we?"

Red, Dembe and Lizzie took turns carrying the litter. Ressler had stopped complaining and dozed a little, or looked at the sky while they carried him. One time he murmured something in his sleep before starting awake and asking where they were, but he only seemed to feel uncomfortable when Lizzie, or someone else, regarded him for an extended period of time, so she tried to ignore him and kept her eyes on the road when she was a bearer or behind her when she was not.

No one followed them, or at least, she never saw anyone.

It took them a little more than an hour to reach the place Dembe and Victor had decided on to land the plane. The plane had not arrived yet.

They put Ressler down in the shadow of a large rock and Red patted Lizzie on the shoulder.

"Get some rest. Dembe and I will keep an eye out for anyone following us."

Ressler sat leaning against the large rock, huddled in his blankets but awake, looking miserable and bored at the same time. Seeing no merit in standing next to Dembe and Reddington, Lizzie sat down next to him. She stretched out her legs with a sigh of relief.

Ressler snorted. "Lot of unexpected walking today, huh?"

"Lot of the unexpected, period." She glanced at his face. Despite the snort, very little amusement could be seen in his expression—but then, she'd always find it hard to find any expression on his face. "Are you…are you in a lot of pain?"

He shook his head. "It's not so bad right now." It annoyed her that she had no idea whether he was being macho or honest. With Tom it was easy, she always knew exactly what he felt, how he felt. He was just so much easier to read!

Despite herself she raised her hand, hesitated, then slowly laid it against Ressler's forehead. This time he didn't flinch away or snap at her; he simply closed his eyes and let her. "You're still very hot."

A ghost of a smile pulled at the corners of his mouth. "I didn't say I was fine, I said it wasn't too bad. Considering I have a fist-sized hole in my belly." He grimaced. "You know, I'm getting sick and tired of Reddington saving my life. It's excruciatingly painful—you know how he got that bullet out? He pushed his fucking hand through that shot wound into my guts to pull it out with a pair of tick tweezers. And his fingers aren't particularly small.

'Now that's an image that will never leave my subconscious," he added morosely, and Lizzie let out a surprised huff of laughter.

"No," she agreed, "I can imagine."

"I don't like owing him anything. And this was the second time." He sounded distant, and when she looked at his face again, his eyes were half-closed and unfocused. "Preventing someone from being shot is different than saving someone who's dying because of it. There's a lot more effort involved. More knowledge. I'm tired of being his Shocking Autopsy victim. I'm fed up with being injured. Mexico sucks; I want to go home."

That last bit came out so petulantly Lizzie had to keep herself from smiling. At the same time, she felt incredibly sorry for him, and a bit worried about this unusual loquaciousness. The fever is making him babble. That must be it. Donald Ressler, complaining that 'Mexicosucks'? That's just…wrong.

"We'll be back soon enough," she said reassuringly. "The airplane should be here any moment now."

He grunted. They both looked at Reddington and Dembe, who were scanning both the surroundings and the air. Reddington was wolfing down a sandwich; apparently Dembe had given him one.

Ressler made another disgusted sound.

"What is it?"

"I'm starving. I didn't know that was possible with a gut shot, but I'd kill for a sandwich. I haven't had anything but water since breakfast."

Lizzie grimaced. "I really don't think…"

"I know, I know."

"I have a candy roll," Lizzie remembered, and dug into the pocket of her jacket to find a crumpled half roll of lifesavers. How appropriate. "It's wild cherry. Do you want one? As long as you don't chew on them, they should…"

"Yes." He held out an eager hand. She gave him one of the sticky, half-melted rings and he licked it from his palm like a horse. She took one herself, and for a few moments they sat there sucking contentedly. After about a minute and a half, her sweet turned thin and brittle, and she snapped it with her tongue against her palate and crunched the remains between her teeth.

Ressler shot her a look. "Don't tempt me," he said.

"Sorry," she replied guiltily. "Do you want…?"

"Shh!"

He stared up at the sky, searching, and then she heard it too: the low, faraway buzz of an approaching airplane. Reddington and Dembe had heard it as well.

Reddington grinned. "There's our ride. Right on time."

But Dembe frowned. "Listen," he said. "There's something else. Another sound. Different."

Ressler's eyes widened. "The helicopter," he said.

9.

Red and Dembe shared one look, then dived for the relatively sheltered spot Ressler and Lizzie were already occupying.

"The blankets!" Red said. "Put them over you, shield your clothes." He himself grabbed one of the blankets and used it to cover his own khaki pants and light shirt, and Dembe's dark grey jacket for good measure. Lizzie joined Ressler under the other blanket.

"Call him," Red told Dembe, but his driver shook his head.

"He won't pick up unless he has a co-pilot and I don't know his frequency."

"Well, then I hope he's aware of the helicopter, or things might get seriously messy." He ducked down as the helicopter itself became visible, far away yet, but shining a searchlight, like a huge torch, down on the mountains.

"The butterfly," Ressler muttered, struggling weakly as Lizzie pushed him down so she could hide his blonde head. For some reason the droning buzz of the helicopter greatly distressed the wounded man; his breathing had sped up and his eyes were wide and wild. And apparently the stress cranked up his temperature; she could feel the heat radiating off of him in waves beneath the shared blanket. "I knew he could fly!"

"Ssh!"

"What is it?" Reddington hissed—although the chances anyone could hear them over the sound of the approaching aircraft were a nice and even zero.

"I don't know!" Lizzie whisper-shouted back. "He's mumbling something about butterflies."

For a moment, Reddington looked puzzled, then a small grin stole over his face. He grasped Ressler's chin between his fingers and turned his head so he could look him in the eye, making sure they both remained under cover.

"Donald. Agent Ressler, look at me. It's fine. You just need to keep quiet and he'll simply pass over us. There's no way they'll be able to make us out."

"But the magnets…!" Ressler protested unintelligibly.

"The magnets are back in the cabin, and Jorge's men blew it up not two hours ago, remember?"

"Uhuh." His eyes were still large, and totally dilated. He'd started to shiver beneath the stifling blanket.

Reddington patted his cheek. "This is just a helicopter. It'll fly over us."

"If it bombs us, all our fingers will be cut off."

Reddington's mouth tightened momentarily, not so much in annoyance as in sympathy. "My friend, it's a tub full of ice for you the moment we're in the air. You're safe. You've got a fever and you're hallucinating. Remember? This happened before, in the cabin. Just stay calm and everything will be alright." The chopper roared in closer, and Ressler moaned fitfully.

Lizzie had no idea what he was seeing, or reliving, but she doubted it was the actual helicopter, hovering bumblebee-like in the air.

Reddington tightened his hold on the other man's chin, pushing his head down and keeping him immobile as best as he could. "Make sure he doesn't get up," he told Lizzie. By now he had to shout to be heard over the drone of the aircraft. "As long as we don't move, they won't see us."

"What about your plane?"

"We can't do anything but wait. Hopefully, Victor noticed the helicopter and has taken a detour. If not, we might be the first people alive to witness an aerial game of chicken."

"Won't they spot the blankets?"

"No. They'll be looking for movement. As long as we keep perfectly still, we won't answer to what they're expecting to see. There it comes, keep him still."

Lizzie leaned all her weight down on Ressler and squeezed her eyes shut. The harsh light of the search beam permeated the blanket and even her eyelids, creating a red world of brightly-lit darkness. The roar of the rotors was deafening; it was flying directly overhead, and very low. She grabbed the edges of the blanket tightly and hoped it wouldn't be blown away.

It seemed to stay there forever. Sweat oozed out of her skin where it was touching Ressler's, it was like huddling close to a furnace. At least he wasn't struggling anymore, but his chest rose and fell in frantic hitches. Ok, come on, move on, nothing to see here, move along now. She worried briefly but fervently about one of her feet poking out from underneath the blanket…but then the whine of the chopper changed, and the light left them. Her instinctive reaction was to toss the blanket away and make a run for it, but she repressed it and kept still, pushing Ressler to the ground when he so much as twitched. For all she knew it might come back and catch them in that terrible invasive glare.

"Sauron's eye," Ressler whispered—or maybe she just misheard him. Surely a guy like Ressler didn't watch or read Lord of the Rings. She stroked his chest to calm him, much like she'd fondle a restless pet—there, there, it's ok, settle down and be a good boy, ok? Next to him, Reddington stirred, peeking out from underneath the blanket.

"It's moved on," he established. "To be precise, it's hightailing it out of here." He released Ressler's face and rested his hand on his adam's apple instead. "You stay down. Can you see Victor anywhere?"

This to Dembe, whose eyes roamed the sky and who shook his head. "No. I can't hear anything over the chopper, either. Wait. I'm receiving a message." He dug into his pocket and got out a small sleek black phone. Reading the text, he laughed before showing it to Reddington, who chuckled as well.

"What's so funny?" Lizzie asked peevishly. Some small stone was digging into her thigh, she was uncomfortably hot, and she was suitably afraid they'd all be discovered by some mental Mexican drug lord who wasn't afraid to prowl the night in a rented helicopter. If they were laughing over a Facebook post, she was going to be seriously annoyed.

"It's Anne," Red replied, still smiling. "She's one of the hostesses—lovely girl, very service-oriented, one of my regulars if I can get her. Cuts a stunning figure in traditional Thai dress. Apparently Victor managed to snatch her up before leaving San Antonio, which is great, because that means we won't have to pour our own drinks on the plane."

"That's lovely," Lizzie said scathingly. "And what's she say?"

"That Victor disliked sharing his airspace with such an ugly little copter, made a detour, hacked the open air frequency the police uses around here, and pretended to be just that. He'll be here in ten minutes."

Lizzie blinked. "Your pilot is a hacker?"

"Victor is a man of many talents. He also makes a mean casserole."

"Your crew is just full of surprises," she said sourly.

Reddington smiled. "If they weren't, I wouldn't hire them. I like surprises." He took his hand from Ressler's throat and used the same hand to pull the blanket off of him as well. Ressler remained prone for a few more seconds, then painfully pushed himself up, shivering.

"Don't do that again," he said, voice low and strangely threatening.

"Only if the butterfly returns," Reddington shot back evilly.

"Fuck you." He tried to get to his feet, failed and slumped back, holding his stomach.

"I'll give you another vicodin on the plane," Reddington promised. "And we need to get your temperature down before your heart gives out."

"I heard what you said about ice tubs," Ressler muttered, clenching his jaws to keep his teeth from chattering. "Not gonna happen."

"We'll see about that," Reddington said matter-of-factly.

Dembe touched his arm. "There's Victor. And no sign of the helicopter." He pulled a flashlight from his backpack, turned it on and waved it in the air. The wing lights on the airplane flickered in return.

Reddington smiled. He drew himself straight and watched with his hands in his pockets how the small, neat jet plane expertly navigated the mountains and landed not twenty meters away from him.

The plane remained on the ground for exactly one minute, just long enough for Reddington, Dembe and Lizzie to drag Ressler on board and for Anne, who was indeed a perky girl with a great figure and perfect, caramel skin, rather like Malik, really, to smile at all of them before she rolled the door back into place. The moment they were all seated, the plane drove off, made a narrow turn and took to the air again.

Five minutes later, Anne was back to welcome Reddington and to ask for instructions. "It's good to see you, sir." She had an unexpected British accent, again like Malik, but more northern, not quite so posh.

"I'm very glad to see you too, Anne. I'm happy Victor could find you so fast."

She waved a perfectly manicured hand. "Oh, that wasn't so hard, as I was there with him at the wedding. I didn't know anybody there, joining him seemed much more fun."

He laughed that slightly too loud but nevertheless infectious laugh of his and patted her hand in a somewhat outdated gesture. She grinned back, and suddenly she was all business.

"So what needs doing, sir? The gentleman over there seems much the worse for wear, and I notice a bandage around your own arm. And your face is a mess! Shall I lay out a cot for both of you, or will you be content with a good glass of champagne?"

Yes, Lizzie thought, this woman has obviously flown with him before. She looked over to Ressler, who did indeed seem much the worse for wear in the gentle light of the plane's interior, barely conscious and white as a sheet.

"The cot for Agent Ressler," Reddington said firmly. "And do we still have those cooling blankets from that trip to Bombay?"

"One, I think."

"Good. Put it over him, but don't set the blanket temp beneath 90 degrees."

"Should I undress him?"

Reddington shrugged. "Shoes only. He'll be more comfortable that way. But I'm sure he'll appreciate it if you clean him up a little and give him some clothes not covered in blood. Just don't touch his bandages, those'll keep for the time being."

"Very good, sir. Is there anything I can get you or the lady or Dembe in the meantime?"

The lady and the two gentlemen declined, and Lizzie offered to help her with Ressler. She accepted graciously. At this point he was more or less like a large doll: slightly cumbersome but quite easy to steer to the cot, which turned out to be a comfortable bed with fresh sheets.

"Dear god, what happened to you?" Anne asked, as she unbuttoned his blood-stained shirt and came to his equally bloody undershirt.

"Got shot," he said curtly, with a perfunctory glance up at her breasts from below heavy eyelids. He raised his arms so she could pull the garment off of him without needing to cut it away. His eyes were still dull with fever, but he'd stopped shivering, so either the fever was going down or he'd reached his new, higher core temperature. Lizzie had found and gave him a dark blue oversized T-shirt, which he pulled on with slow, heavy movements. He shucked his blood-crusted pants on his own, and Lizzie winced slightly at the sight of the rather hideous scar on his left thigh. Once he was covered up with a crisp, white sheet, Anne spread out the cooling blanket over him with an apologetic look.

"This might be a little uncomfortable, but we need to cool you down. I'll turn it off in half an hour or so, see if your temp's gone down a bit. There. Do you mind if I clean up your face?"

"What's wrong with my face?" he asked tiredly. "Sure, go ahead."

In the end, Lizzie didn't think he ever felt Anne's careful administrations with a hot, jasmine-scented towel; he closed his eyes while she wiped at the smears of dirt and dried blood, and when she was finished he was fast asleep, shivering slightly under the cooling blanket.

Anne stared down on him for a couple of seconds, a pensive frown on her pretty face.

Yeah, Lizzie thought. He does have a lot of bad luck. And he does look pretty awful at the moment.

"Do you have any more of those towels?" she asked, and the hostess shook herself and nodded.

"Of course. My apologies."

Lizzie managed a tired smile. "No worries. You probably don't get to deal with these kinds of things…do you?" She sincerely hoped not. The girl was wearing fake lashes, for god's sake; it would be criminal to expose her to whatever Reddington got himself into—on the other hand, he had a single mum doing money laundry…But Anne shook her head, visibly unsettled.

"No. I…Please sit down, I'll bring you a towel. And perhaps something to eat and drink?"

A couple of minutes later she brought all of them hot towels and cups of jasmine tea with tiny cupcakes and miniature sandwiches.

Reddington spread the towel out over his face and soaked in its heat before using it to wash the dried blood and smoke form his cut cheek and forehead. He drank his tea with obvious relish and popped one of the cakes into his mouth before getting up to check on Ressler.

Lizzie followed him, first with her eyes, then, as he took his time, physically as well, and found him leaning against the door frame, watching the other man from a distance with a ponderous expression on his face. She peeked past him and again felt that strange, anxious sensation in her stomach. I'm not ready for another partner.

"He looks…really bad," she said in a small voice.

Red turned around and put his arm around her shoulders. "As a matter of fact, he's doing a little better. He's sleeping soundly, and the fever seems to have dropped a little. He'll be fine. We'll get him to a hospital as soon as we get back to Quantico, they'll hook him up to an IV, and he'll be his old cheerful exuberant self again in a week or two."

Lizzie raised her eyebrows. Ressler wouldn't know exuberant if it bit him on the ass. She studied Red's face, watching him watch Ressler, and asked, "What did he do?"

"Hm?"

"The way you look at him. It's changed. It was different after that business with Anslo, and now it's changed again."

"Changed in what way?"

She shrugged. "Almost…protective."

He laughed softly. "You may be a successful profiler, but you can't read me, Lizzie. Dear Donald doesn't need protection. But you can't spend a day and a night on the run without growing…fond, of someone."

"Fond. You're…fond…of Ressler."

"He's an amiable soul!"

"You're talking about Ressler, here."

He chuckled again, but his eyes were serious when he said, "Do you remember when I told you that you shouldn't trust Tom?" She froze, but he did not take his arm away, and he whispered in her ear, "You're not ready to listen to me on that account, yet. That's fine. You will be, one day. And when that day comes, you should also know that you can trust Ressler, not because he's mine, because he isn't, but because he's a good man. You can count on him. So if you don't trust me, or Tom, or anyone else, and you need someone to turn to, you might consider Ressler."

"Are you quite finished singing his praises?" she asked, angered by his old accusative bullshit.

His arm bent behind her, patted her shoulder. "Praises? I'm just stating facts. I didn't say he's pleasant to be around, has a witty sense of humour or an entertaining manner. I'd rather spend those twelve hours with Madeline Pratt. Now that's a remarkable woman! Did I tell you about that time in Algiers that we…" He led her back to the seating cabin, and she wanted to pull away, but somehow, he charmed her again with his outrageous account, and despite herself she was smiling by the time she sat down again.

Four hours later, Reddington sat staring out of the window, slowly sipping from a glass of Glenmorangie. He'd slept for a while, but the riddle of this whole mess had woken him up again. In his hand was the pistol Ressler had acquired from the man whose head he'd bashed in, the empty Heckler & Koch mark 23, Special Operations standard issue.

This was a close one. Maybe too close. If this is a lead, if this is connected to Esher, your whole setup in Mexicomight be compromised. If it's not Esher, then who is it that corrupted Jorge? Questions, questions.

He took another sip and rubbed his eyes. The tiny cuts on his face itched, stung when he rubbed at them. It had been a long, long day.

He put the gun on the table next to him.

Tomorrow would be another day.

Time to clean house again. Someone else's house, this time.

End

Heckler & Koch Mark 23 Mod 0

Semi-Automatic

.45 ACP

1996–present (Used by United States Special Operations Command)

Sometimes, it may seem Reddington is checking Ressler out. He's not. He's just checking for detail. I see Reddington like some sort of giant charming database; he's always trying to get more information, add more to the picture he already has of someone, something, or a situation.